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POMPEII OF THE WEST 

AND OTHER POEMS 



POMPEII 
OF THE WEST 

And Other Poems 

h J 

JOHN HALL INGHAM 



31 




> J , J ' '> ' 

5 J' f \ '> 



PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1903 



t f. 1 1 c c 



Copyright, 1903 
By John Hall Ingham 

Published February, 1903 



THE Library of il 

CONGRESS, I 

Two Copies Received 

m 30 190 

? Copyright Entry 
CLASS CU XXc. No 

^/ ^ i> S 

COPY B. 






Printed by 
J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A. 



The author wishes to thank the editors and pub- 
lishers of the Atlantic Monthly, Scrihner's Maga- 
zine, the Sunday-School Times, the Travelers Rec- 
ord, the Independent, Lippincotfs Magazine, and 
the Century for permission to include in this volume 
poems that appeared originally in those periodicals. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Pompeii of the West ii 

Character i6 

Beethoven 17 

Godfrey's Cove 18 

On the Rocks 19 

A Cliff Visitor 20 

The Midnight Sea 21 

The Beggar of Babylon 21 

Tone-Symbols 23 

George Washington 29 

Coronation Day 30 

A Summer Sanctuary 33 

On the Discovery of a Cache of Spear-Heads 34 

Lines on the Falls of Niagara 35 

Children All 38 

The Heavenly Playground 40 

Bee and Boy 41 

A Psalm of Hope 42 

The Poet 47 

A Grave near Beaucaire 50 

Les Baux 51 

The Church of Saint Benoit 52 

Orleans S3 

Leonardo da Vinci's Grave at Amboise 54 

7 



Chartres 54 

God 55 

Love in Italy 56 

A Warm Winter 59 

By the Lake 61 

On the Canal 62 

By the Sea 64 

" There's a Lay in every Leaf" 64 

" Star that Shinest to a Star" 65 

Enchantment 65 

Equality ^2 

Greek Music 73 

" I DARE NOT Fume or Fret" T}, 

In Excelsis 74 

" I cannot sing" 74 

Ode to the Cirri 76 

A Song of Spring 79 

The Watch 80 

Tennyson 81 

Quatrains 82 

Galilee 86 

Phillips Brooks 96 

Advent 98 

Noel 98 

Palm Sunday 98 

Good Friday 100 

Hesperia 100 

Optimism loi 

A Thought on the Death of Fanny Kemble 102 

An Outlook 102 

Voices 103 

8 



Silence 104 

Lines on giving a Dime to an Italian Street-Singer 105 

The Century-Plant 112 

Orpheus 113 

Apple-Blossoms 118 

Usefulness 119 

Canon 120 

Fireflies 121 

At Midnight 123 

A Son of God 123 

A Thanksgiving 124 

" Stars that silent be" 125 

De Minimis 126 

On a Dying Insect 126 

The Question 127 

To Omar Khayyam 127 

A Young Man's Creed 128 

Three Friends 129 

Westward 130 

Incompleteness 131 

The Last Line 132 

Nature's Analogies 133 

Spring's Message 133 

Love's Dualism 134 

Spring in the Spaces 135 

Carnot's Death 136 

Common Life 136 

A Summer Night in Town 137 

Love, the Purifier 138 

The Day and the Hour 138 

May 139 

9 



On the Naming of a New County 140 

Fruitlessness 141 

Summer's Legacy 142 

In Drought Time 143 

John Keats 144 

All-Hallowe'en 144 

Redivivus 146 

A Summer Sermon 147 

The Sonnet-Form 148 

Books 148 

Franz Liszt 149 

Off Havana 151 

To OUR Censors 151 

In the Churchyard 152 

Michael H. Cross 153 

Nature's Alchemy 154 

An October Evening at Lake Oscawana 154 

The End of the Year 155 

The Yearly Question 155 

The Locomotive 157 

Symbols of Science 158 

Dreyfus 162 

Philadelphia, 1901 163 

Poet to Politician 163 

" In the Violet" 164 

Sinai 165 

Anton Seidl 166 

To A Wood-Robin 167 

The Citizen 168 

The River 171 

Days i73 

ID 



POMPEII OF THE WEST 

In the Ausonian land a city rose 

Far from the haunts of poverty and toil, 
Where wearied ones sought rapture or repose, 

And evermore from the enchanted soil 
New fountains flashed into the odorous air, 

New palaces sprang upward to the light, — 
Doomed not to know decay : that vision fair 

Fled from the wreck of ages, — in a night 
Of fire and ashen gloom passed perfect out of sight. 

And when the swift-revolving years had brought 

Four centuries to a later, larger West, 
And men were burdened with the wealth they 
sought. 
And Art seemed dying and the Soul op- 
pressed, — 
Dawned on our senses in the morning-gleam 

That lit the margin of an inland sea 
Another city, lovely as a dream. 

And like a dream, alas ! too soon to be 
No more of earth, — a thing of love and memory. 

II 



How came this realm of faery to exist 

In the dull light of these prosaic days, 
With towers and temples floating through the mist 

And imaged in the winding water-ways ? 
What meant those magic distances that made 

Imagination so delight to run 
From gilded dome to snow-white colonnade, — 

Now fading slowly with the setting sun. 
Now traced in captive lightning when the day was 
done? 

For not since high in Babel's lucent air 

Garden and grove in endless vista rolled, 
Or Athens' genius made her rocky lair 

A deathless shrine of marble and of gold, 
Or Venice, smiling mistress of the seas, 

Flashed with her argosies from East and 
West,— 
Never since then, in other scenes than these. 
Hath such transcendent loveliness possessed 
The human eye, or thrilled with joy the human 
breast. 

And were there blame if we in this appear 

Infants that have not found our proper speech, 
But lisp the language of a bygone year? — 

There is a sense of beauty that doth reach 
So deep into the very heart of things 

That it is one with Nature, nor shall cease 
Till Man outgrow all high imaginings : 

Though nations multiply and arts increase, 
The best we have is Rome, the best we are is Greece. 

12 



We are thy children, O Thermopylae ! 

And thine, O ever-glorious Salamis ! 
For ye have taught us to be wise and free, 

And hath the earth a grander thing than this ? 
We fight, — immortal Caesar points the way: 

We jest, and Aristophanes doth smile: 
We sing, and Homer thunders in our lay : 

We build, and lo, this wondrous classic pile, — 
This glittering maze of dome and tower and peri- 
style ! 

Yet is the spirit ours that once was theirs, — 

A spirit royal, not of servitude: 
We do not mimic them, but are the heirs 

Of all they purposed or achieved of good. 
And in our work whatever merit shows 

Is offspring of the higher, purer will 
That sanctifies the lives of men and flows 

Through every clime and age, — a heavenly rill 
That made earth fertile once, and so doth make it 
still. 

And thus this city shining as the snow 

Sprang not from the corruption of the land, — 
The broken trust that laid the red man low. 

The slavery our thoughtless fathers planned. 
The office-holder's bribe, the purchased vote. 

The foulness of our politics, the race 
For golden gain, the demagogic throat 

That rules the mob who rule us, — this disgrace 
Of present and of past had here no part nor place. 

13 



But in this shrine of beauty only were 

The elements that make a people's worth, — 
The courage of the great discoverer 

Who added a new planet to the earth. 
The Pilgrims' arduous fight for God and home, 

The Quakers' victory through peace and love, 
The heroic rising when the time had come 

To break maternal bonds and onward move 
A Nation that confessed no liege save One above : — 



The wisdom moulding that new Nation's course, 

The virtue that upheld it on its way, 
The patriot-soul of Washington — the source 

Of all true freedom we enjoy to-day. 
The later trial when a few were brave 

And thundered till the many felt the need, 
The hands that smote the fetters from the slave. 

The heart of Lincoln and the arm of Meade, 
And every glowing word and every burning deed : — 



The patient toil that on the barren plains 

Makes gardens bloom and cities multiply, 
The prudent skill that prisons steam in chains 

And safely wields the lightnings of the sky. 
The silent ones who do their duty well, 

The voice of Brooks, the thought of Emerson, 
The songs of bards that like a paean swell 

Above the din and lure us ever on, 
All high and holy lives whose victory is won : — 

14 



These spoke to us through all the eloquent lines 

Of palace and lagoon, — that did not take 
The imprint of to-day, but bore the signs 

Of the eternal beauty that doth make 
Of every hero's home a Parthenon, 

And for our present glory doth amass 
The deeds of splendor that of old were done, 

And the true-hearted sage and soldier class 
With spotless Solon and sublime Leonidas ! 



And thither came the nations of the world 

With friendly tribute. Of the ancient East 
And the new West the standards were unfurled 
Above their varied work, — a gorgeous feast 
Of Man's supreme achievement. South and 
North 
Point from their blazing sands and blighting 
snows 
To miracles of Mind, that issues forth 

Victorious over Force. Foes greeted foes, 
And from the motley throng strange forms of speech 
arose. 



Now all is silent. Over lake and plain 

The wild birds circle till the night sweeps on, 
And Man seems nought. — But O, what doth re- 
main 
Is greater than the glory that is gone ! 

15 



As blossoms, though they wither on the tree, 
Yet make its Hfe more fruitful, so the might 

Of faith and fervor, love and liberty. 

That brought this marvellous vision into sight. 
Shall be a lasting good, a treasure infinite. 

Nor is this all. — Such beauty is the type 

Of the sublime perfection of the Soul-: 
Seeming to fade, 'tis only growing ripe 

Beyond the senses' compass or control. 
O Land, when thou art purified at last, 

These fleeting fabrics of thy hope shall be 
Thy sure attainment. From the buried past 

The shadows of Vesuvian night shall flee. 
And, lo, Pompeii — white with Immortality! 



CHARACTER 

He shapes the spheres to suit his ends 
Who hath a muse for every mood, — 

Who in himself hath many friends 
And finds in crowds his solitude. 



He asks no change of scene or clime 
Nor heeds the lure of alien lands : 

His hours for him are all of Time, — 
His Universe is where he stands. 
i6 



His force doth like the forest grow ; 

His tenderness as sunshine thrills ; 
His calm desires like rivers flow ; 

His hopes are as the mighty hills. 

Serene through tempest and through tide 
His heart is as the ocean-deeps ; 

And where eternal laws abide 
His soul a starry vigil keeps. 



BEETHOVEN 



Thou dost not sing of sorrow, being too vast 
For puny personalities of woe ; 
Nor yet of joy: thy fateful measures flow 
From springs too deep to sparkle, overcast 
With midnight and immensity. The past 
Is not thy theme, for all thy concords glow 
With living fervor. And this present show 
Seems lost in thy infinity at last. 

What is thy message, what thy mystery? — 
Or shall we ask what doctrine gilds the day. 
What creed the clouds unfold, — the hills, the sea? 
All things they tell, — or nothing. He alone 
Who loves can learn, when Nature points the way 
Or thou dost breathe the beautiful in tone. 
2 17 



II 

Yet thou hast gentler moments when thy might, 

No longer tuned to a supernal key, 

Is modulated by humanity; 

And in thy symphony the other night 

A hero's clarion sounded through the fight, 

A maiden's laughter rippled peacefully. 

And love and sorrow woke a threnody 

To speed a deathless spirit in its flight. 

O sweetly human, splendidly divine ! — 
Not like a turbid torrent threading far 
And fathomless abysses, thou dost shine 
A clear, full flood wherein we joy to scan 
The cloud, the snowy summit and the star, — 
The flower, the forest, and the face of Man. 



GODFREY'S COVE 

NEAR YORK HARBOR, MAINE 

These downs that sink and swell across the land,- 
Soft fields suffused with yellow mistiness, — 
These pastures growing greener to the strand, 
The willows with their whispered cadences, 
The rocky sculpture of the waves and skies, 
The clear, cool waters prisoned peacefully. 
Are prophets all of what beyond them lies, — 
The infinitely changeful, changeless Sea. 

i8 



O Soul, thy multitudinous happenings, 

The trivial events of nights and days. 

The griefs that darken and the hopes that shine. 

The pleasant places and the stormy ways, — 

Are hints and heralds of eternal things, 

Inflowings from the tide of the Divine ! 



ON THE ROCKS 

Here may one lie awhile and silently 

Shape thoughts of death from things that cannot 
die. 
And drown his sorrow in the eternal sea 

And merge his being in the infinite sky. 

A mighty peace pervadeth evermore 

The deeps of ocean and the ethereal height. 

Though here the billows thunder on the shore 
And vapors veil the leagues of endless light. 

For far beneath this surge of sound and spray 
Life's current, like a glorious river, runs, 

And far above our planet's clouded way 
Gleam myriads of immeasurable suns. 

So on the confines of that vaster deep. 

That ampler sky whereto our footsteps tend, 

Forces of tide and tempest seem to keep 
A ceaseless vigil, striving without end, — 

19 



But all in vain : beyond the storm and stress 
Are calm and silence. Ever from above 

Come whispers of immortal presences 
And glimmerings of Everlasting Love. 



A CLIFF VISITOR 

Deep-blue with Autumn blasts the billows rolled 
Before us as we scanned on open page 
The rarest spirit of our clime and age, 

When from the rocks above us, gray and cold, 

A feathered glint of emerald and gold 

Flashed on our sense, — as though the Concord 

mage 
Had sent a winged thought, — a heritage 

Of finer truth than written word could hold. 

A humming-bird it was : fearless it flew 
And struck the scarlet robe beneath our feet 

In hope of honey. Man and Nature drew 

Once more into communion strange and sweet, 

And, for the moment, rock and bird and sea 

The poet's magic made humanity. 



20 



THE MIDNIGHT SEA 

Wind-moan and wave-moan and keen, clear, 

cold, 
The moon looming out of the East in a glory 

of gold. 

Spray-gleams and star-gleams, — a glittering show 
Of all that is changeless above and changeful below. 

Tide-floods and Time-floods, until at a breath 
The surge is stayed by the ebb and the heart-throb 
by Death. 

Sea-song and Soul-song forever attest 
That better are service and singing than silence and 
rest. 



THE BEGGAR OF BABYLON 

Thou aged man that through long years 

Sittest beside my daily road, 
I have at heart to dry thy tears 

And smooth thy path and ease thy load. 
Narrow has been thy lot : 'twere wise 

To fathom life ere life be done ; 
So take this gold and seek what lies 

Beyond these gates of Babylon ! 

21 



" Here was I born, here was I bred, 

And in this air, beneath this sky, 
Fate ordered I should love and wed 

And watch my wife and children die. 
Now I am left, the only one, — 

A slave in garb, in spirit free. 
And I shall ne'er leave Babylon, 

For Babylon is all to me." 

Alas, if what is spent and spilt 

Should starve our very souls at last, 
Or if our only hopes were built 

Upon the ashes of the Past ! 
The world is wonderful and wide : 

Did not the high gods make it so 
That as from place to place we glide 

In joy and wisdom we may grow? 

O, in the West a sapphire sea 

Circles the odorous isles of Greece, 
And in the South eternally 

The pyramids are robed in Peace ! 
Or Eastward let thy longings run 

And bear thee to the birth of day, 
And, lo, the cradle of the sun — 

The snowy peaks of Himalay! 

" Ne'er have I gazed from plain to hill. 
Nor mused by Ocean's swelling tombs, 

Nor traced the twinklings of a rill 

Through groves of spice and cedarn glooms. 

22 



What summit can to me compare 

With yonder temple's shining towers ? 

And O, these gardens in the air 

Fragrant with fruit and flushed with flowers ! 

" So let the Indian maiden keep 

Her tryst beside the Ganges' stream ; 
And let the Phrygian shepherd sleep 

Where Ilium flames into his dream ; 
Leave to the islander his beach 

Where ripples sparkle in the sun; 
The gods ordained a place for each ; 

And mine is here — in Babylon!" 



TONE-SYMBOLS 
I 

ARPEGGIOS 

Bee-flights from bloom to bloom beguiled along 
Till darkness sends the hour of honeyed rest ; 
Bird-flights from spray to spray about the nest 
In a tumultuous ecstasy of song ; 
Cloud-soarings from the bosom of the sea 
To snowy peaks and moonlit vastnesses ; 
Star-showers sprinkling Space's wilderness, — 
Are these not symbols of Humanity? 

23 



The creatures of caprice and dim desire, 
We strive to soar when scarce we know to climb, 
And lose not nor advance, but fruitlessly 
Wing little flights, till, in an hour sublime 
And unforeseen, we strike with pulse of fire 
Some primal note of our life-melody. 

II 

HARMONICS 

Up from the rim of this transcendent night 
Sweepeth the silent moon, full-orbed and free. 
Turn not thy gaze therefrom, yet wilt thou see 
Side-gleams of vapors sown with rainbow-light ; 
Of leaves that twinkle in a dalliance bright 
With evening zephyrs ; of the silvery mere 
Where ripples sparkle, speed, and disappear. 
The frame that Nature forms for every sight 
Is portion of her picture, as, in sound. 
Each note partakes of subtle sister-tones. 
Adjudge that virtue flawless : circling round 
See sombre shades of selfishness and pride. 
Wholly condemn this sin, — and through thy 

groans 
Some angel voice rejoices at thy side. 

Ill 

KEYS 

Nature is all-harmonious: mountain, sea. 
Forest and sky blend in a perfect whole. 
But Man in all his Art must aye control 
The time and place where every seed should be, 

24 



Best to attain its full fertility. 

The sweetest song that ever thrilled the soul 

Were discord dire if on the ear should roll 

Its semblance echoed in another key. 

By Amazon or in far Vishnu land 

Or at thy very hearthstone doth abide 

The brother whom thou dost not understand. 

Silence thy strain of prejudice and pride 

And find, where once all jarred upon thy ears, 

His pathway as melodious as the spheres' ! 



IV 

CHORDS 

See how the bent of this aspiring tree 
Allures the eye to yonder mountain's crest. 
Thence to the cloud above, at length to rest 
On some high planet's silver purity. 
Or look along the level : silently 
The forest points us to the furrowed land, 
The stretch of mead beyond and, last, the sand 
Swept by the surges of the sleepless sea. 
Nature hath not a note she sounds alone. 
So all our thoughts and actions, late or soon, 
i\re linked unto their fellows, one by one. 
Pray that to-morrow's aim may be in tune 
With thine own best achievement, and efface 
The lingering tones of yesterday's disgrace ! 

25 



V 

OCTAVES 

Melodious messages our Shakespeare sang 

In the old time came to me yesterday, 

But not from heights Olympian : they sprang 

Out of the common mire and the play 

Of sunny childhood in a sunless den, — 

Less lofty, but as potent now as then. 

With hearts elate we summon the high gods 

By their shrill paeans to applaud our deeds : 

They sound an answer suited to our needs. 

Tuned deeper than the rapture that we miss, — 

Not sky-born strains, but psalms that rise from 

sods. 
The same refrain, — true souls, ye know it well ! — 
Is hymned in altitudes of heavenly bliss 
And hurled in hate from the profounds of Hell. 



VI 

FIFTHS. I 

Great hopes that grow and languish; great 

despairs 
That blot out suns, yet on the verge of night 
Unveil the stars ; high instincts, humble prayers 
That out of darkness yearn unto the light ; 
Lost loves that clasp their agony, — to know 
A solace in the glory Love has been ; 
And bottomless desires all aglow 
With the unconscious majesty of Sin; — 

26 



All things that lead away from common sight 

Into the vast abyss above, below, 

And make, beyond our ken, for weal or woe, — 

Sound open fifths to-day, but on the morrow 

Eternity reveals the thirds within 

SubHme with major joy or minor sorrow. 

VII 

FIFTHS. II 

How wonderful the tonal mystery 
That fifths, so long as they at rest abide 
Or move in divers ways, not side by side, 
Do wake an elemental harmony 
Serene and simple and profound ; but bent 
On the same progress, all grows discontent. 
All chaos, where sweet concord was before ! 
Souls that I love, we are not otherwise : 
Should each of us his proper path explore, 
Bold to perform the best that in him lies. 
True to himself in thought and word and deed, 
Life were a psean. — But to choose our lot 
By the blind guidance of another's creed 
Makes God's fair world a discord and a blot. 

VIII 

THE SONATA-FORM 

Not through caprice or casualty arose 
Music's sublimest form, — but Genius knew 
And sang the eternal principle of two 
Contrasted and developed. At the close 

27 



Of the sun's struggle with the storm, there flows 
Across the sky a wave of wondrous hue. 
From varied heat and cold the seasons drew 
Their wealth of golden grain and silvery snows. 
All life is dual, and for every theme 
In Nature as in Sound a mate must be : 
Only from union springs fertility. 
So Love, that some have called a foolish dream, 
Is where the wiser spirits wake at length 
From twofold weakness into single strength. 

IX 

UNDERTONES 

From the far sea a haunting cadence falls 
Through boom of breakers hissing into spray 
And thunderous swirl around dank chasm walls,— 
More peaceful, yet more masterful, than they. 
And in the wood a quiet note is heard, — 
Not where the leaves hold breezy whisperings. 
Or faintly pipes the newly-fledged bird 
'Mid slumberous stir of hidden insect wings : 
The spirit of the place hath accents clear 
That ring through all the babel pure and true. 
And so with Man. — Who, silent and sublime. 
Moves through this din of multitudes, may hear 
Under the words we say, the deeds we do, 
Our life-notes swell the Symphony of Time! 



28 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 

This was the man God gave us when the hour- 
Proclaimed the dawn of Liberty begun ; 
Who dared a deed, and died when it was done 
Patient in triumph, temperate in power, — 
Not striving Hke the Corsican to tower 
To heaven, nor Hke great PhiHp's greater son 
To win the world and weep for worlds unwon. 
Or lose the star to revel in the flower. 

The lives that serve the eternal verities 
Alone do mould mankind. Pleasure and pride 
Sparkle awhile and perish : as the spray 
Smoking across the crests of cavernous seas 
Is impotent to hasten or delay 
The everlasting surges of the tide. 



29 



CORONATION DAY 

Tower and town were a vision of splendor ; 

Banners were glistening from gable and wall ; 
Thousands were thronging the highway to render 

Homage to one who was worthy of all. 
Burgess and baron accoutred to meet him, 

Maidens and children with flowers to fling, 
Minstrel and bard with their pseans to greet him,— 

Silently waited: — but where was the King? 



Out by the river the breezes of morning 

Melted the mists and scattered the dew, 
Ofttimes with silvery ripples adorning 

All the wide waste his journey lay through. 
Where was the gilded barge that should speed him 

Away from the stranger and unto his own 
Who longed — with dawn in its freshness — to lead 
him. 

Their bravest and best, to the foot of the Throne ? 



Forth stepped a warrior — they cheered to behold 
him ! — 

Famed among men as a hero of frays : 
" Fools !" he exclaimed, " shall silence enfold him 

Whom even the thunder were feeble to praise? 
Vainly ye tempt him by waiting and watching: 

Let the earth shake with the welcome ye bring ! — 
So may the hill-tops some echo be catching 

Meet for the ear of the glorious King!" 

30 



Then, how the sound of their shouting and singing 

Through the rent heaven rose higher and higher ! 
Trumpets were blown and the bells were all ringing ; 

Flash followed flash till the air was afire. 
Over the tree-tops the noon came on ever; 

Sunbeams were woven in blossom and bough ; 
Light flowed down with the river, — but never 

The gleam of his sail nor the plash of his prow ! 



A poet then spake, — they were mute when they 
heard him ! — 

Sweetest of singers, the first of their bards : 
" Think ye this crash and confusion have stirred 
him 

Whom hope of a worthier welcome retards ? 
Give him the best — be it silence or singing — 

Your Art can create and your Genius inspire ! 
Glitter and gaudiness vain to be bringing 

When Beauty alone will fulfil his desire." 



So from canvas and stone by the conjurer's powers 

Loveliness leaped into life at a glance ; 
Soft murmurs of music and incense of flowers 

Rose from the rounds of the mystical dance. 
In the forest the leaves were beginning to shiver 

With the breath of the Night from her Orient 
home; 
The peace of the twilight was flooding the river, — 

But no stir from his oar, no flash from his foam ! 

31 



Last came the sage, — they knelt to adore him ! — 

Purest and wisest and hoHest of all ; 
" Wrong are the ways ye have found to implore him 

Who recks not of pomp and is deaf to your call. 
Night will shine down from her starry abysses, 

Dawn wake anew 'mid her fleeces of gold, 
Days and years pass with their pangs and their 
blisses, 

And never your Shepherd return to his fold ! 

" Look in your hearts ! Is it truth ye are voicing ? 

Are not these greetings and garlands ye bring 
Pleasures of sense, the mere joy of rejoicing, 

Sweets for yourselves, — not for love of the King ? 
What do ye care, so ye fight with the winner. 

Feast on his spoil and be drunk with his pride ? 
Better, ye deem, to survive with the sinner 

Than with the saint to have anguished and died ! 

" Some day, when other things fail, ye will sigh for 
him, — 

Eyes very weary and hearts fain to break, — 
Ready to live for him, ready to die for him, — 

Gladly to give up the world for his sake ! 
Then, it may be, from the dark river yonder 

Into the light of your longings will spring 
The glow of a presence, a vision of wonder. 

The crowning of hope, — the face of the King !" 



32 



A SUMMER SANCTUARY 

I FOUND a yellow flower in the grass, 
A tiny flower with petals like a bell, 

And yet, methoiight, more than a flower it was, 
More like a miracle. 

x\bove, the sky was clear save where at times 
Soft tinted fleeces drifted dreamily, 

Bearing a benison to sunny climes 
From altars of the sea. 



In vestments green the pines about me gleamed 
Like priests that tend the sacrificial fire, 

And the faint-lowing cattle almost seemed 
Some far intoning choir. 

It was a place and an occasion meet 

For some high, solemn wonder to befall ; 

And, when I saw the flower at my feet, 
I understood it all. 



33 



ON THE DISCOVERY OF A CACHE OF 
INDIAN SPEAR-HEADS ON RIDGE'S 
ISLAND IN THE DELAWARE 

No more about the camp-fire's fitful light 

The swarthy warriors of the older race 

Make solemn murmur through the hours of night, 

Watching the signal from some loftier place 

Flash peace or war. But still the river flows ; 

The hills are fresh and fragrant with the Spring; 

The morn is beautiful as that which rose 

On homeless hearts of yore, when, with these spears. 

Were buried loves and hates and hopes and fears, 

There to await this day's awakening. 

Yet Death doth purify: no longer gleams 

The spark of fury from these points of stone: — 

Wonder enfolds them and a sober tone 

Of Fantasy, and Memory born of dreams. 



34 



LINES 

SUGGESTED BY A FIRST VISIT TO THE FALLS OF 
NIAGARA 

A VOICE of many waters, — aye, a voice 
Of rivulets rippling over pebbly beds 
And gurgling through the quiet of the groves 
And blossoming arcades that wind among 
The peaceful, pleasant isles of Dufferin ; — 
And, from without, tones of a wilder voice 
Of Alpine torrents, were a thousand turned 
Into a single channel, there to strive 
With a brute mass of stone, now seething high 
To smite the heavens with foam, now plunging low 
To wrench the deep foundations of the rock 
And whirl them into limbo ; — and, beyond, 
A voice to which the thunder of the sea 
Is as a whisper and the earthquake's roar 
Is as an echo of its mightier self, — 
The swell of an unceasing monotone 
Yet infinitely varied, as it were, 
With lights and shades of sound, now delicate, 
And now demoniac, — now hurled aloft 
In high aerial blasts, now rolled along 
In dreadful diapason, yet in all 
Sublime beyond conceiving, — the supreme, 
Colossal cadence of the Cataract ! — 
Niagara, thou art a living thing: 
A while ago and I beheld thee writhe 
With terror of the near-impending doom ; 
Then came the fearful crisis, then the calm 

35 



That follows on the shock and, far below, 
Thy memory returned, thou dost pursue 
An awful course, haunted by evil dreams 
And frenzied with endeavor to escape 
These agonizing straits and rest at length 
On the still bosom of Ontario. 



Yet who would lose for even such a sight, 

This scene of water's utmost pomp and power, — 

The rapids' rush and whirl ; the precipice 

Aye shattered into atoms ; lines of foam 

Curved into forms of frost-like imagery 

Across the surface of the lesser fall ; 

The mass of fleckless green that overhangs 

The centre of the greater ; mounds of mist 

Raised evermore and evermore dispersed 

By the keen sweep of rainbows, — sparkling scythes 

Swung by the spirits of the sun and moon ; — 

Who, who, — were he compelled to choose for aye 

Between the great and little, — would forego 

The ceaseless beauties of a humbler kind 

That deck our daily life, make it a joy 

And earth a paradise ? — The pleasant path 

Through the Spring-scented woodland ; the soft 

swell 
Of mossy hillocks ; morning harmonies 
Of brook and bird, and twilight choruses 
Of frog and cricket; orchard-wanderings 
Amid a blush of blossoms or a glow 
Of golden fruit ; hours by a quiet stream 

36 



That cools the willow-roots and catches warmth 
From the reflected sun ; acres of corn 
That redden to the touch of eventide 
Like feathered warriors watching for their prey; 
Flowers that twinkle in the turf, then melt 
Into a breath, a sweetness, — and are gone ; 
The hush of nightfall and the fireflies' dance, 
Aflame amid the droppings of the dew ; — 
These and a thousand others are the boons 
Bestowed on all who take in love and trust 
Dear Nature by the hand, learning her ways 
In due humility, content with this, — 
To understand a little and be blest. 



So, when the leafy knoll doth satisfy. 
What need of Alp and avalanche? — The brook 
Goes bubbling on in crystalline cascades. 
Each in its scale a true Niagara, 
And ask we more ? Why seek in the sublime 
What never fails us in the commonplace? 
Is deeper peace therein or higher joy? — 
Alas, we reason blindly, — we who are 
Both mortal and imperfect ! Every day 
That follows like the past doth blunt the edge 
Of Wonder and deprive us of a thrill ; 
And Beauty multiplied a million times 
In sod or snow-flake lacks the potency 
That sways and startles us in some vast whole,- 
Some rounded miracle that makes all else 
Seem tame and trivial. So birth and death 

37 



And the heroic deed disclose in Life 
Alystery manifold where all before 
Looked dull monotony. So at the call 
Of Ocean, Matterhorn, Niagara, 
We lay our burdens down and raise our eyes 
From shallow circumstance to gaze once more 
Into the deeps of the Eternal Truth, — 
The awful glories of Infinity. 



CHILDREN ALL 

Children all, where'er you be, 

Bond or free, 
Red or yellow, white or black, 
You have many things we lack,- 
We the big and you the small, 

Children all ! 



How we fool and feign and fight 

Day and night, 
Craving gold beyond our needs, 
Bickering about our creeds ! 
Radical, conservative : — 

Thus we live. 
38 



"What you wish, you hold in play 

For a day, 
Learn its worth and let it go : 
What you first assume to know. 
Once disproved, you soon despise, — 

So are wise. 



We abide in our demesne 

Of routine. 
Life that seemed so fair and full 
Groweth trite and cold and dull. 
Custom maketh every grace 

Commonplace. 



Well to know that there are eyes 

Where Surprise 
Like a throned enchanter dwells. 
Filling earth with miracles, 
Aye revealing with his wand 

Wonderland : 



Well that there are ears to note 

Strains that float 
Out of wood and sea and sky 
Rife with fairy melody, — 
Tones whose magic oft hath stirred 

Breeze and bird : 
39 



Well that there are hearts to feel 

Nor conceal 
Primal love and primal hate. 
Free from fear of Death or Fate, 
Neither crude nor overworn, — 

Hearts new-born ! 

Many lands and tongues we own. 

You alone 
From the tropics to the poles 
Form one realm of kindred souls, 
And you hold the world in thrall. 

Children all ! 



THE HEAVENLY PLAYGROUND 

Father, in Thy Heavenly Land 
Where are the children playing? — 

1 dream of many a joyful band 
In cloudy pathways straying. 

Perchance they cross in crescent cars 
Those sunset mountain ridges. 

Or weave a dance around the stars 
And over rainbow bridges. 

I cannot think of them in rows. 
Long Alleluias hymning, — 

With hearts so ignorant of woes 
And eyes that ne'er knew dimming. 
40 



More like that in the soundless Void 

They run their merry races, 
Or mount some vagrant asteroid 

And sail about the spaces. 

O, if Thy plan is understood, — 

And 'tis a hope we cherish, — 
Our good shall there grow greater good, 

Our evil slowly perish ! 
Each aim shall find an end to suit, 

And, warmed upon Thy bosom, 
Our natures flush to perfect fruit. 

And theirs to perfect blossom. 

And as some lofty, lonely life. 

Its solemn work arresting. 
Doth turn for respite from the strife 

To one short hour of jesting; — 
So even there among the skies 

May thoughts be sometimes straying. 
And, sated with sublimities, 

Joy in the children's playing ! 



BEE AND BOY 

In the bee-life comes a moment of pain. 
When suns are spent and the rains are over 
And snows are shed on the dust of clover 

And honey will never be honey again. 

41 



But SpHng will return, though he dreams it not, 
And the bee will wake, — how glad to discover 
That yet once more he may clasp the clover 

And sip the honey in every spot ! 

Happy the bee and happy the boy 

Whose works and ways are brimming over 
With sunshine of Spring and sweetness of 
clover, — 

A life of love in a world of joy ! 



A • PSALM OF HOPE 

Thou who to-day dost stand. 
The present in thy hand. 

The future in thy thought, 
Be not afraid to cast 
From an ignoble past 

The fetters it has wrought. 

Life is too full and free 
To waste in misery. 

From their abodes of bliss 
The high gods never sent 
A summons to repent : 

There is no time for this. 
42 



If thou wouldst grapple grief, 
Be it to bear relief 

Unto another's woes. 
For selfish is remorse, 
And vanity the source 

From which contrition flows. 



Learn never to despise 
The good that underlies 

The fitful faults of youth, — 
Old failures that were meant 
To teach the discontent 

That goads us on to Truth. 



Old lessons misapplied, 
Old sanctities defied. 

The better deemed the worse,- 
Were like the eddy's shock 
Above the hidden rock, — 

A warning, not a curse. 



Why sorrow that the fire 
Of an impure desire 

Did once thy senses move. 
If Lust was only made 
To be the spirit's aid 

And lure thee unto Love ? 
43 



The sin of earlier years 
Like darkness disappears 

That dawn remembers not. 
To-day demands thy care ; 
To-morrow needs thy prayer : 

Be yesterday forgot ! 



Behold, on every side 
Are treasures multiplied 

For thee to choose and take. 
The ages give their best 
For this one moment's test, 

For this one mortal's sake. 



Nature with changeful mien 
Of season and of scene 

Attends thee night and day, — 
Chill Winter, cheerful Spring 
With heralds on the wing 

Lest Summer should delay, — 



The sunshine and the rain 
That ripen fruit and grain 

And shape the budding flower,- 
The silvery mists o'erlaid 
With golden light and shade 

Of each Autumnal hour, — 
44 



High warblings in the wold 
And deep and manifold 

Intonings of the sea, 
And summits o'er whose snows 
The stars of heaven unclose 

Their still sublimity. 



The songs the poets sung 

When Love and Time were young,- 

Thoughts that endure alway 
In canvas and in stone, 
Art's everlasting throne, — 

All these are thine to-day. 



And Music at whose voice 
The very spheres rejoice 

Now steeps thee in her spell, 
Till, thrilled with truth, thou deem 
Life a transcendent dream, 

The world a miracle. 



Yet there are ecstasies 
Diviner still than these 

Of Nature and of Art, 
When men, thy brothers, stand 
And clasp thee, hand in hand. 

And hold thee, heart to heart. 
45 



Here in Love's holy-place 
Look thou in every face 

Till, sudden, at the end 
Thy hidden thought is known, 
Thy secret soul is shown, 

And thou hast found thy friend ! 

What Life hath to bestow 
Both to enjoy and know 

Thus having crowned thy quest. 
Do thou explore in turn 
The ways of all, and learn 

The thing thou doest best. 

Thereto with might and main 
Apply thy heart and brain, 

Nor doubt that, at the last. 
Thy labor, taking root. 
Will with some perfect fruit 

Redeem the imperfect past. 

So live and work till Death 

Shall soothe thy struggling breath, 

And, soaring from the sod. 
Thy patient toil and thou. 
Alike immortal now. 

Are gathered unto God ! 



46 



THE POET 



AN EXCERPT 



The world is all alive 
With subtle influences. Every bud 
That flushes into fragrance ; every leaf 
That tingles with the life-blood of the tree ; 
The clouds the censers of the sea uproll 
To the blue dome of heaven ; the mountain- 
tops, — 
Homes of eternal silence ; wash of waves 
And foam that breaks and bubbles on the shore ; 
Rainbows and sunsets, — Beauty met with Death 
Where Hope is born; the breathing of the 

storm, — 
Swift herald of the blast that blots out light ; 
Dawn, — when a bird-note quivers through the dark 
To wake the sun ; Night, — when the stars shed 

calm 
Across the infinite abysses : — these 
Have all a message that the poet's heart 
Alone can understand. So Nature speaks 
In all her varied forms : no film of flesh 
Or veil of night shuts from the poet's eye 
The open secret. On the wind it breathes. 
Falls with the rain and thunders from the cloud, 
Or flashes over a blue span of sky 
Upon a sun-path. Every fleeting fact 
Is winged with revelation. Would ye know 
What Galileo taught about the sun, 
Matters it not that Shelley one day saw 

47 



A glint of gold where sped a bubbling brook 
Out of a leafy bower, and from it drew 
A treasure that enriched the world ? In vain 
Will Science search so long as she ignores 
The highest lessons of the highest minds, — 
The surface truths where root and branch are one 
In the fruit's ripeness. 

Yet another step : 
He knows not Nature well not knowing Man 
Whose spirit is reflected in the sea 
And sky. The star whose glory gilds a joy 
Shines very darkly on a soul in pain. 
Anger and grief and love and hope contend 
Not in the heart alone, but leap thereout 
Into the elements. For everywhere 
Is Man : blood courses through the Milky Way, 
And every twinkling in the firmament 
Is but a heart's pulsation. To his moods 
The Universe responds, having for each 
A varied message that none other hears. 
Thus is the Truth imparted, word by word, 
To waiting ears. Of what import to all 
The falling of a leaf in Autumn wood, 
A gleam of moonlight on a dream-tossed tide, — 
That finds a Shakespeare ready to record 
His passing fancies and interpret them 
For Immortality! 

To master Man 
And all he means, — this Science fails to do. 
Probing with lancet and dissecting-knife 
An organism born of jelly-fish, 

48 



Evolving somewhat higher. Sparks of thought 

Kindle the dark interstices of flesh 

To a celestial glow where the divine 

And human merge. The passions ebb and flow 

Through the broad channels of the heart. Above 

Rises the fairy structure of the brain 

Along whose mystic aisles and arches flit 

The lights and shades of living. Every age 

Adds semitones to the chromatic scale 

Of fine emotions. Every hour exhales 

An influence that speeds beyond the night. 



But not by logic or analysis 

Is the grand problem solved. With eagle eye 

Imagination scans the surface facts 

And reads their inner meaning. Far beyond 

Into the vaster realm of the Unseen 

Soars Intuition, making gods of men ; 

And over all, the reconciling soul 

Of the two worlds, — the Infinite Idea 

Translated into Life, — immortal Faith ! 



49 



A GRAVE NEAR BEAUCAIRE 
To live a life of fearless dignity 
And gentleness : when comes the time to die 
And shift the certain for a doubtful gain, 
To bear with patience the long hours of pain, — 
If tEis be manly and a hero's part, 
What say you when 'tis found within the heart 
Of a dumb brute this to intend and do? 
Has Heaven denied the spark it gave to you ? 

I know an island, a sequestered spot 
Washed by the Rhone, whose waters trouble not 
A solitary mound beneath the trees, 
Unvlsited save by the fitful breeze 
Of the fierce Mistral or the liquid strain 
Of some glad nightingale that would, in vain. 
Awake what Death has silenced. On a stone 
Is writ the name of " Sailor ;" — this alone 
To tell the tale, — a home beyond the sea 
Whence a loved master took him, but to be 
Sent on another longer journey then, — 
A journey yet unknown to dogs and men. 
O, if a noble life thus down the scale 
In God's all-wondrous work may not avail 
To snatch the boon of Immortality, 
Yet shall it last in other ways and be 
A high example they may emulate 
Who else might knock in vain at Heaven's gate ! 
So well the little English word may stand, — 
A loving tribute in a foreign land. 
Until some mighty freshet of the Rhone 
Claim all remaining vestige as its own. 

SO 



LES BAUX 

Here once were ladies fair and gallant lords 
Who filled the halls with laughter, — till the call 

Of the loud clarion came, " Up with your swords ! 
The foe advances, — forward one and all !" 

But looks grew softer when, to smiles and tears, 
The Troubadour had touched his lute and told 

The tender tales that echo down the years, — 
For Love is young, howe'er the world grow old. 

The peaceful tidings brought unto the West 
Through this high portal only dealt the rod 

Of pestilence to whoso sought for rest 

Upon what might have been the Mount of God. 

O blessed saints that from the holy shore 
Storm-driven sought a refuge here in vain, 

Your blight that fell on those hard hearts of yore 
Has lasted in long centuries of pain ! 

And now the lizard runs along the walls 

That shield the hungry peasant from the night, 

And all is desolation, — save where calls 

Hope from a ruin, " After darkness, light !" 



51 



THE CHURCH OF SAINT BENOIT 

An ancient fane I know that lifts its spire 

Near where the Loire o'errolls the shifting sands, 
Upon whose portal written, as with fire, 

Are names of pilgrims come from many lands, — 
The Kings, Popes, Saints and Martyrs of the earth 

Who strove for heaven with undoubting heart 
Ere Faith' had fled from France or the new birth 

Of Spirit died in the '' new birth" of Art. 
Before this altar they have knelt in prayer ; 

These vaults resounded with their holy psalm ; 
And by their hallowed dust the torches' flare 

Illumined faces infinite in calm: 
Silent, O France, yet, rightly understood, 
Bidding thee seek, not Glory, but the Good. 



52 



ORLEANS 

Thou olden city that didst give a name 

To a young daughter o'er the Western sea, 
For that far land we ask a worthier fame, — 

A portion of the spirit breathed on thee 
By her whose virgin soul, aflame with love 

Of God and country, trusted in the might 
Of heaven-sent hope and visions from above : — 

Who, fraught with faith and girded for the fight, 
Rushed to the field and wrested from, the foe 

Immortal victory. And when his shame 
Has hounded her to death, how grandly glow 

Those great, glad eyes that dim the encircling 
flame 
And flash to all the centuries the tale 
That Love must conquer, God and Heaven prevail ! 



S3 



LEONARDO DA VINCI'S GRAVE AT 
AMBOISE 

In fair Touraine, that fed the blood of kings 
With blood of subjects, as by fairy hanHs 
Wrought into forms of loveliness there stands 
A chapel on the height whence Amboise springs 
Dark with old tragedies, — a fitting place 
For one who for dear Art's sake could forego 
The sun of Italy, whose pencil show 
Beauty in Christ's — and in Medusa's — face. 
The wondrous " Supper" slowly crumbles now 
On the far convent wall that gave it birth ; 
The color fades from Mona Lisa's brow, 
And here lies Leonardo : not on earth, 
But in God's hand and in the human heart 
He finds the true eternity of Art. 



CHARTRES 

When Love and Faith of old wrought hand in hand. 
Faith took the stone and bade it soar in air 
And seek its God as an embodied prayer. 
While Love crowned all with beauty. Who can 

stand 
Beneath these arches where the soft light falls 
In a rich flood of color down the walls 

54 



Nor wonder till he worship? — Heaven's rays, 
Divided by an Art whose life was praise, 
Fill the whole fane with glory, then unite 
Upon the soul of Man to make it white. 



GOD 

His atoms round the circle of the sky ; 
His moments mount into eternity; 

But well He guides the snow-flake as the star, 
And swift as morning light His heralds are. 

He shares the false and blends it with the true, 
Hides in the oath and the blasphemer too, 

And, in despite of blasphemy and lies, 
Thou mayest outspeed the saints to Paradise. 

Thou hearest in the tramping of the crowd 
Only earth's din ? — His silence is more loud 

Xnd sounds through all the symphony of Time 
A still, small voice, — an undertone sublime. 

That wraps in harmony the circling spheres. 
Rings in the solemn changes of the years, 

55 



Awakes the flower in every slumbering bud 
And echoes through the caverns of the blood,- 

A summons unto Life, that lifts its head 
From the drear waste of chaos and the dead 

And flashes forth upon a world complete, 
A footstool radiant with the Maker's feet ! 



LOVE IN ITALY 



All loveliest light that wraps the wold in dreams 
And haunts the shadowy deeps of moonlit skies 
And trembles through the mist of mountain 

streams, — 
Floats on her hair and softens in her eyes. 
All sweetest sound in leafy knoll or nook 
Of swaying bough and ecstasy of bird 
And mossy murmurings of the hidden brook, — 
Is in her voice yet more melodious heard. 
Nature in her doth hold high carnival 
Where fair things still a fairer guise employ: 
There beauty hath no blemish, bliss no pall, 
Sunshine no shadow, sainthood no alloy. 
So blest is Paradise, so sad a fate 
To wander ever on — without the gate ! 

56 



II 

Love, Love, Love ! What else is there in Hfe 
That is immortal ? War and hatred cease, 
The sheath outlives the sword : the day of strife 
Is prelude to the centuries of peace. 

The night is but the shadow of the sun ; 

The evil, of the good. The atoms yearn 

Each to the other — even as I turn 

To thee, the type of all, yet being one. 

As the poor peasant in the wayside shrine 

Sees the Great Sacrifice, so I divine 

The passion of the universe in thee. 

— What do I say? How signifies to me 

This world of God and men (nay, do not start!), 

So thou but rest thy head upon my heart ? 

Ill 

1 wandered on the terrace in the night ; 

The sky was murky and the stars were pale ; 

An oleander gleamed in spectral light 

Beneath whose bloom a lonely nightingale 

Broke out in snatches of a mournful lay. 

I felt that Beauty had not passed away 

But slumbered, till those sweetest eyes once more 

Should open on the world. — When, suddenly, 

Across the heavenly gulf from shore to shore 

A ruddy shaft outsped ; the air grew clear ; 

A dewy incense circled flower and tree : 

I knew she was awake and Morn was here. 

Dear dawning of my life, once dark and numb, 

How glad the warmth since thou and Love have 

come ! 

57 



IV 

" True love should overwhelm the Muse's power:" 

This, then, was thy rebuke one glorious night 

When we were last in Venice. All the while 

Were silent answers wafted from the isle 

That holds the Adriatic tide at bay ; 

Which, else, would at the ebb breed slow decay 

Where now is life and beauty ; — at its height 

Would deluge all. No city then would rise 

To smile in palace, pinnacle, and tower 

And calm reflections of unclouded skies. 

Art is the lover's Lido: passion's rage, 

Fierce to destroy, by Beauty's wise control 

Works for the world a wondrous heritage, — 

Immortal types of the immortal Soul. 

V. 

The air was heavy with the scent of flowers 
When from the height of Fiesole we gazed 
Where Brunelleschi's dome and the two towers 
Shone in the sunset, — like three fingers raised 
To point a heaven where Art and Worship blend. 
A last long spire of flame shot through the sky 
And left thee sad : " The glory of the end, — 
How sweet to die in Florence !" was thy sigh. 
But I replied, " Rather, the golden bars 
Of day are burst : the world doth onward move 
To larger life beneath the infinite stars. 
The calm of night comes winged on the breath 
Of roses, dearest heart. When Youth and Love 
And Florence meet, can there be thought of Death ?" 

58 



VI 

Under the shadow of our pyramid, 

Rome's thought of Egypt, — dearest, there are hid 

Two graves of English poets. I have heard 

That no celestial song of love or loss 

That Italy gave birth to could outvie 

Their rapture whom death gave to Italy. 

So here three ages meet: the imperial word 

Of nations sunk in night still sounds across 

The tide of years, to tell the spirit's life 

Through the poor form's decay. Not otherwise 

These verses that I sing to thee are rife 

With visions Adam dreamed in Paradise 

And hopes that herald in the Eternal Day : 

Hearts turn to dust, — ^Love changes not alway. 



A WARM WINTER 

From each dark haunt of woodland disappears 

The glimmer of the snow. 
No icy spearlets glisten through the tears 

That off the branches flow. 



Some lone, forgotten warbler of the sun 

Bewails from bough to bough 
A warmth that once so ripe a harvest won, — 

To reap a famine now. 

59 



And murmurous swarms awake to wing a flight 

That whirls them to the tomb ; 
And buds that bhnk an instant at the light 
'Are blighted ere they bloom. 

What joy it were to hear upon the lake 

The skater's merry call, 
And see fulfilled in every hurrying flake 

The promise of the Fall, — 

That Life awhile should slumber, wrapped about 

With raiment pure and sweet, 
Till from the hidden germ a flash leap out 

And Spring arise, complete ! 

O souls that shiver in the bitter blast 

That sweeps the bounds of Time, 
May no enfeebled energy outlast 

The vigor of your prime ! 

Better the Winter's call to rest at length, 

The silence of the sod, — 
The slow awaking to immortal strength 

In the sweet fields of God ! 



60 



BY THE LAKE 

The hours are golden that I pass 
Upon this shelving bank of grass 
Where violets and daisies make 
A glittering margin for the lake. 

Deep in those waters there is seen 
A forest of eternal green, 
And clouds that float in tranquil bliss 
Through regions fairer far than this. 

And flowers there^are whose lovely hues 
Are radiant with celestial dews : 
Bathed in a liquid ecstasy 
They cannot fade, they cannot die. 

And all the downward-drooping trees 
Seem, stirred by shadowy melodies, 
And flashing wings soar into view 
To sink in depths of boundless blue. 

Clear gleams the image in the tide 
Till o'er the surface ripples glide, 
And then the silvery vision seems 
To melt into a thousand dreams. 

O world of time through which I move, 
The Spirit over all is Love ! 
We look into the deeps and see 
The surge of human misery : 
6i 



The futile fight, the dark despair, 
The stress of poverty and care, 
The hopes that fail, the loves that wane, 
The awful sacrament of pain, — 

Like ripples vanish, and the glow 
From the far heaven wakes below, — 
The same glad light reflected there 
That we have loved in upper air ! 



ON THE CANAL 

A LONG low line of water-way 

Whereon we glide, — a happy throng 

Of wanderers who fill the day 
With jest and song. 

Beyond, while shadows wax and wane, 
The river, at its own sweet will, 

Majestic, curves from hill to plain, 
From plain to hill. 

Here where the stealthy Indian trod 
Over the rocks the hare-bell grows. 

Or blossoms from some span of sod 
The faint wild-rose. 
62 



A fragrance all our senses floods 
From where the grape is flowering, 

Sweet as the dew on waking buds 
And fresh as Spring. 

And through the branches, as we float, 
Wood-robins flit from morn till even, 

And warble in a triple note 
A hint of Heaven. 



Then night comes on, and stars and moon 
Look down in silence, — as to shame 

The fireflies' magic maze that soon 
Sets fields aflame. 



And thus we grow to understand 

A quiet born of ecstasy, 
A peace of water and of land, 

A calm of sky, — 

That make the soul serene and still, 

Where lights of love and dreams of good 

Are imaged, — like the cloud and hill 
In vonder flood. 



Oh, eyes grow dim and friends must part. 
And youth with years sweeps swiftly by ; 

But there are days that haunt the heart 
And never die ! 

63 



BY THE SEA • 

Midnight, and a long moan o' the tide, 
And waves that break in white and sUde 
In foaming curves across the sand 
To lick the seaweed where I stand ; 
And phantom sails against a moon 
That dips in darkness, — oh, too soon ! 
What is the message that ye bring, — 
The solemn mystery ye sing. 
Still night, calm heart, and restless sea. 
And, through them all. Infinity ? 



THERE'S A LAY IN EVERY LEAF." 

There's a lay in every leaf, 

A sonnet in every stone. 
Not a thing that does not joy to sing. 

Nor song that sounds alone. 
So long as lovers live. 

So long as poets stay, 
Life hath more melody to give 

Than Death can take away. 



64 



STAR THAT SHINEST TO A STAR." 

Star that shinest to a star 
Over wastes of endless night, 
Are there messages in flight, — 

Winged hints of what ye are, 

What ye will be, — that ye send 

Each unto his fiery friend ? 
Or do ye exist to shine 
Into mortal eyes like mine, 

Star that shinest to a star ? 



ENCHANTMENT 

AN ODE 
" The light that never was on sea or land" 

I 

Life is an isle enchanted ; 
Around it roll the seas of endless time ; 

And every wave is haunted 
By shadows of a mystery sublime. 
Whom most the subtle spell doth bind 

Alone its source can find, — 
Alone unfold amid these shades of night 

God and His world in light. 
5 6s 



Nature doth take her darling by the hand 
To lead him through the pleasant land. 
She shows him suns that set and rise, 
The infinite calm of starry skies, 
The peerless lustre of high peaks of snow, — 

Fleecy clouds that float in air 

Or drop in nectar pure and rare 
On all things beautiful below. 
She fills his ear with harmonies, — 
Soft sighings of the Summer breeze. 
Bird-voices from melodious woodland calling. 

The thunder's deep-toned threnody, 

Far chanting of the eternal sea 
And murmurous sound of misty waters falling. 
About his every breath she weaves 

An incense from the sweetest flowers 

That ever blossomed amid bowers 
Of dew-bespangled leaves. 
Yet he who would the secret tell 

That Nature holds so well. 
Must enter by the gate of bliss 
A scene more wonderful than this : — 
Through all the ecstasy of earth must know 
A light the world has never seen. 
Shadows that no sun can throw. 

Melody more serene 
Than human ear hath ever heard 
In lapse of water or in song of bird. — 
Through every pulse of being he must feel 

The deep enchantment steal, 

66 



Until the answer flashes on his view 
And that which seemed most false is known to be 
most true. 

Ill 

A magic hath the Past, — 

A potency more vast 
Than light that circles space or sound that shakes the 

skies. 
The Pyramids that rise 
Out of old Egypt's sands, — 

Feudal walls that frown 

On valley and on town 
In the far Northern lands, — 
The fanes of classic Greece and Rome, 

Seem sometimes more our home 
Than daily rounds unscented by blossoms of sur- 
prise. 
But he who fain would make that dead world live 
Must to the knights of yore a new arena give, — 
Not by rude delving at the stones, 
Sifting the dust of dead men's bones. 
Or reading mystic letters on the walls 

Where scarce the sunlight falls. 
As ivy that o'erspreads a ruined tower 
Lends to the Past a glory not its own 
By borrowing from this present hour 
What from the Present hath forever flown, — 
He must awake an atmosphere 
More mystical and yet more clear 
Than that once mingled with their breath, 

^7 



So what to them was glare of common day 

Dawns on our weary way 
A dream of joy, a glory unto death. 

The poet's eye should see 
A rapture in romance, a charm in chivalry, 
Unknown to them that lived in olden days. 

His saint, aglow with purer praise, 

His hero, more serene in soul, 
Must shame the former deed, press to a grander 
goal. 

If the enchantment pall, 

If once cold Science come. 
Then will the wondrous fabric fall, — 
The master- work of ages be desolate and dumb. 

IV, 
The lover's eye 

In one fair form and face 

All loveliness doth trace 
That thrills the air and haunts the sky. 
Her voice hath all the melody 
Of Winter wind and Summer sea, 
And what is sweetest, purest, best, 
Finds a sole haven in her breast ; 

While everything around. 

Like silence into sound, 

Like darkness into day. 
In her celestial presence fades away. 
Yet do not this a blindness call ; 
Rather a foresight, true and clear, 
Of the full glory of the year. 

68 



The germ of undeveloped power 
That other men know not at all 

He sees as perfect fruit and flower. 
His narrowness that they decry 
Is as a lens through which to spy 
One star of the true galaxy, 
While their whole truth is but a lie 

And their whole harmony a strife. 
To sluggish sense and clotted vein 

The spirit of a newer life 
Summons a movement full and free. 
On eye and ear, on heart and brain, 
All gracious influences pour 
From hill and vale, from sea and shore. 
He hath a hope for every hour ; 

No season's voice for him is mute. 
But each hath happy messages 
And every change is bom to bless. 
Winter beneath her breast of snow 
Holds promise of the future glow ; 
And after Spring has caught the rays 
And woven them in golden days. 
Comes Summer with the full-blown flower, 

And Autumn with the ripened fruit. 
He is in tune with Nature's symphony : 

Now, as of old, 
Under the hands of Man, her lord. 
She rolls through space one glad accord. 

The silent shadows flee. 
Mists melt away, .the doors of heaven unfold. 

69 



upon Enchantment's wings 
He soars from earth to higher things, 
Beholds the deeps unsealed, 
The Universe revealed. 
And they who, in derision, 
Once mocked the lover's vision. 

Awake at last to find 
The darkness theirs : the world, not Love, is blind. 

V 

The world is Spirit : this mysterious show 

In which we now abide 

Is but the channel where its currents glide 
From heavenly sources into depths below. 
So free it is all bounds it doth surpass. 
So full that it doth ever overflow, 

Flooding the forms of sense, — 

Not changing them, but making them intense 
With a new meaning. From the blade of grass. 
As from the highest impulse of the heart. 

Whispers the oracle sublime, 
And every syllable it speaks 
Reveals some truth that Manhood seeks : 
Thus is the whole incarnate in the part. 

And the Eternal grafted on to Time. 
The flower that in the garden grows 
Becomes a star while yet a rose, 
Exhales an incense that doth scent 
The temple of the firmament. 
And flashing from its resting-place 
Illumines all the courts of space; 

70 



While the faint atom, that from far* 
Hurls off the night, remains a star, 
But deepens to a soul and floods 
Man's spiritual solitudes. 

Art's humble votary 
Captures the sparkle, giving it a home 

Where it may ever bide, — 
Now in the rounding of a dreamlike dome. 

Now in the glowing grace 
Of canvas or the marble face, 
Now on the sphere-encircling tide 

Of deathless melody. 
From densest dusk of wooded ways, 
From pools where every sunbeam plays. 
From glistening caves in earthy deeps 
And breezy beds where ocean sleeps 
From land and water, air and fire. 
Spring forth the forms that they inspire, — 
More elemental than themselves. 
Of gnomes and naiads, sprites and elves, — 
Each phantom an embodiment 
Of what was Nature's true intent, 
Giving to Fancy ear and eye 
Finer than she could satisfy. 
Then from Imagination's plane 
The spirit mounts to Faith's domain. 
Shines through the higher hopes and fears 
That Man has known for countless years, — 
Reflected thence into a thousand creeds, 

The altars of unnumbered needs, 

71 



Each dark with myth that doth belie 
The claim to be sole shrine of all the good, 
Yet each, when rightly understood, 
A sacrifice for sin, — a beacon to the sky. 
Thus, spirit of Enchantment, at thy breath 

Beauty is born of Death, — 
Hope, leaping to fruition from the sod, 
Scatters the night and guides us up to God ! 



EQUALITY 

Judas and Jesus, both in Jewry bred. 
Grew up to manhood in the accustomed way, 
Slumbering by night and toiling through the day. 
The one of them esteemed the other's head 
Worth thirty silver pieces. How his plan 
And he, in turn, were valued, none may know. 
Jews, Romans, were they, but between them, lo. 
All that is infinite in God and Man I 

Equality, though demagogues may storm, 
Hath never been, — but let our axiom be 
That each hath fitting service to perform 
Which no one else may do as well as he : 
The skull is the achievement of the worm ; — 
The soul a monument of Deity. 



72 



GREEK MUSIC. 

The silent Space enfolds a sea of sound : 
The silence of the Ages is too deep 
For Art to penetrate their dreamless sleep, 
Nor holds the Sphinx a secret more profound 
Than with what magic Orpheus and his lute 
Opened the gates of Hell. No more the dance 
Wakes Cyprian groves: the pipe of Pan is 

mute. 
We only know that there was melody 
Of spirit so ecstatic as to trance 
All worshipping within those glorious shrines 
That fill the earth with beauty. Poesy, 
Sublime as in its youth, no longer rings 
With the old choral splendor. Who divines 
The universal hush while Pindar sings ? 



I DARE NOT FUME OR FRET." 

I DARE not fume or fret : 

Ever before my eyes 
Are silent stars that set 

And silent suns that rise. 

I cannot wail or weep : 
To every burdened breath 

Cometh a respite, — Sleep ; 
Cometh a rapture, — Death, 
73 



IN EXCELSIS 

Hide our souls in Thy great heights, 

Thou among the stars ! 
Draw them upward to Thy Hghts, 
Quicken them with heavenly sights ! 
Weary are they, full of scars 
From these earthly fights. 



Peace is on the summit snow, 

Serene and unattained. 
Greater peace there is, we know, 
Where Thy lamps celestial glow : 

Some that peace have gained. 
Beyond the days, beyond the nights 

That Godhood makes and Manhood mars. 
Hide our souls in Thy great heights, — 

Thou among the stars ! 



"I CANNOT SING" 

I CANNOT sing in climes so cold to Art, — 
Whose beacon is not Beauty, but the glare 
Of molten metal. Should a sudden spark 
From old-world altars kindle here a glow, 
While from our Western wonder-land should blow 
Winds scented with the prairie, — these might start 

74 



A fire of genius to whose infinite scope 
Our flame seemed shadow. But, alas, we are 
Too young for glory and too old for hope ! 
A cloud of leaden mist veils everything : 
No hint from heaven, no signal from a star 
To bid me sins: ! 



'fc> 



Could Shelley sing if his enraptured lark, 
Dreading the din, had fluttered to the ground, 
To melt no more into melodious air ? 
If an impassive world were murmuring, 
" Be silent, poet !", heeding more the sound 
Of mills that grind out gold to greedy hands 
Than songs that woo the want from hungry 
hearts, — 
Could Shakespeare sing? 

Yet, O my Soul, be patient ! — On these lands 
Dear Nature smiles, and in her love imparts 
High purposes and longings for the light : 
Brave wars are waged ; true victories are won. 
Out of the breast of ocean must arise 
A pyramid of cloud ere all the skies 
May move in crimson caravan along 
The pearly peaks of dawn. And so, to-night, 
A prayer ascends, and with to-morrow's sun 
May come a song ! 



75 



ODE 

TO THE CIRRI 

Ye wanderers in the silent ways of heaven, 
That from the crimson portals of the morn 
Through the white radiance of the noon are borne 

Up to the purple pinnacles of even, — 

How have I watched, exulting in your splendor, 
To see the sunbeams in each fleecy fold 
Weave mystic hues of amethyst and gold, — 

Then sought in vain your fitting praise to render ! 

Were I the lark, I'd dream that ye might love me, 
And, mounting to your eyry in the sky, 
Pour out my life in song. But here I lie, 

Poor clod of earth, — and you so far above me ! 

Above the surge of seas, the flash of fountains. 
The winds that murmur softly through the night 
Or blazon forth the fury of their might ; — 

Above the summits of the highest mountains, — 

The realms of rain, the prison-house of thunder. 
The vapors lightning-riven, rainbow-zoned, — 
Over them all ye sit in state, enthroned 

In a celestial sphere of light and wonder. 

The dust of toil, the incense of our altars. 
Our notes of joy and pain, — how far below ! 
Where the faint footfalls ever come and go 

Of Youth that hastens and of Age that falters. 

7^ 



Of heaven ye seem, yet always are attending 
The world upon its course about the sun, — 
Content to serve, nor stray in paths that run 

Through galaxies and spaces never-ending. 

How shall I sing you rightly ? — At the portal 
Of the divinest Muse I would be told 
What ye resemble that the earth doth hold, — 

Sharing, like you, the mortal and immortal : 

Like to the glow two youthful hearts are feeling, 
Not passionless, — where purity intense 
Doth hallow all the mysteries of sense, 

A golden glimpse of Paradise revealing: 

Like to the poet whose Olympian measures 

Move not through woes of war nor lures of lust,- 
Low loves and hates of creatures of the dust, 

But soar among the soul's ethereal treasures, — 

Fair spirit forms of fantasy and fable 

That haunt the air and whisper from the sea. 
More sweetly human than Humanity 

Whose type they are, — and far less miserable. 

Is it of Death ye tell, whose barriers sever 

This softness of the Spring, this Summer glow 
From the dark Winter into which we go, 

Where the warm Now is merged in cold Forever ? 

n 



Or is it Life ye teach, — the culmination 
Of souls that centre to the Source Divine, 
Where each in glorious liberty shall shine 

Unlost in the vast cyclus of Creation ? 

We know not. Oh, our ears are dull for hearing 
The gracious messages of skies and seas ! 
Our eyes are dim and read but mysteries 

Where on the cloud His symbols are appearing : 

Till Beauty wakes. — The shadowed leaves are twink- 
ling; 

A breath of fragrance circles every bud ; 

The starlight shivers in the mountain flood ; 
The brooks their mossy borders are besprinkling. 

Out of the hills a thousand tones are ringing ; 

Harmonies stir in ocean and in air ; 

A glorious symphony is everywhere: 
We ask no prophet : all is told in singing. 

Our thoughts, our hopes from Nature's frame re- 
moving, 

The One of whom the whole is but a part 

Now opens out to us His very heart : 
We need no lesson : all is learned in loving. 

So float on ever in your peace supernal, 
Ye radiant fleeces, messengers sublime ! 
Your presence shall inspire the soul through Time, 

Your promise light it on to the Eternal. 

78 



A SONG OF SPRING 

King Winter is low : 

His sceptre of snow 
Hath melted away in the mist of the streams ; 

The ice of his crown 

Hath trickled adown 
To soften Earth's slumber with beautiful dreams. 



The usurper is come, 

And the merry bees hum, 
And the birds in the wildwood are carolling clear; 

While jubilant ring 

The horns of the Spring 
From upland and lowland, from meadow and mere. 



In the leaflets o'erhead 
Green mingles with red, — 

As Summer and Autumn were blended in one; 
The dogwood doth gleam 
With blossoms that seem 

A mockery of snow in the smile of the sun. 



Sing, blackbird and swallow. 

From hillside and hollow, — 
Flash flakes of the sunlight through forest and fell ! 

From the heart of the bush, 

Wood-robin and thrush, 
Pour out your rich rapture to gladden the dell ! 

79 



Vain reveller, weep 

For loved ones that sleep, — 
Whose eyes will not open to welcome the Spring ! 

Thou mourner, rejoice 

That vision and voice 
One victory herald, one prophecy sing ! 



THE WATCH 

It is a night of sentinels : 
Glow-worms are peeping out of dells, 
And stars are blinking in the sky. 
And God holds all beneath His eye. 

Though vision may no longer trace 
The treasures of my Lady's face, 
My inmost soul her image keeps 
Who now within her chamber sleeps. 

Slumber, and may no earthly stream 
Pollute the current of thy dream, 
Nor my unworthy flame arise 
To dim thy guardian angel's eyes ! 



80 



TENNYSON 

OCTOBER 6, 1892 

Dear and great singer, ere the gleam of gold 

Has faded from the flowers on the way 

Where Whittier was borne, again to-day 

A harp is hushed, a loving heart is cold. 

And thou, the new, art numbered with the old ! 

O poet of the high Arthurian lay, 

Make us true knights, that we may work and pray, 

Fired by thy fine ideals, ever bold 

To strive that, like thy singing. Life may be 

A perfect Art attuned to noble ends ! 

So take our tears, — no deathless threnody 

Like thine for that fair soul that sailed afar ; 

Till now at dawn ye meet again, — two friends 

Safe with your Pilot, having crossed the bar. 



»i 



QUATRAINS 

THE QUATRAIN 

The quatrain do not scorn ! — One line, one word, 
May hold the thought that to an Epic grew : 

All music may be echoed in a bird, — 
All light reflected in a drop of dew. 

GENESIS 

Did Chaos form, — and water, air, and fire, 

Rocks, trees, the worm, work toward Human- 
ity,— 

That Man at last, beneath the churchyard spire, 
Might be once more the worm, the rock, the tree ? 

THE LESSON 

Thus spake a poet : " Shall I break the spell 

Of spheric music with a homily? 
Let Beauty teach, and all is surely well. 

You ask my moral ? — Take my melody !" 

TO SORROW 

O ye that weep, — alas, ye are not few ! — 

In your souls' darkness let this comfort be, — 

Day hides the vasty stillnesses from view: 
Night and the stars unveil Infinity ! 

WORDS 

Words are our tyrants in these soulless days : 
We serve the syllable, revere the phrase. 
Oh, that the Muse would give us power to sing 
No more the rhyme, the metre, — but the thing ! 

82 



THE IRREVOCABLE 

Thou thinkest Paradise were hardly won 
Did Hell, too, last not through Eternity. 

Thou hast done the deed : it is forever done. 
Is that not punishment enough for thee? 

RESTRAINT 

The wildwood flower do not cull, 

Or eye will lose what hand doth win. 
Think not to say, " How beautiful !" 

But let the beauty enter in. 

TO THE POETS OF PASSION 

Of infinite instincts, souls intense that yearn, — 
The weaklings warble. Dante told in rhyme 
How the hand steams when wet in winter-time, 

And paper changes color ere it burn. 

ARISTOCRACY 

The blade of grass that pierces city glooms 
Seems lowborn to the loveliness that blooms 
Without the walls. — Yet to produce this blade, 
Were all this sky and sun and Springtime made. 

THE PROPHET-SWORD 

Singeth the rust on the sword a carol of peace, 
Silencing choirs of seraphim flaming through war- 
less heights, 
Clash of the fallen centuries, din of old days and 
nights : 
So is the sword the sign that the sword shall cease. 

83 



RUINED 

Who asks what Sex is, let him scan 

The penalty here paid : 
It is thy thought, O heartless man ! 

Thy heart, O thoughtless maid! 

WISDOM 

The sages who sainthood despise 

Have little understood 
That if it is good to be wise, 

'Tis wiser to be good. 

NIGHT 

The heavens their ancient miracles perform; 

The passive earth her age-long vigil keeps ; 

And Man in safety and in silence sleeps 
Through cyclic calm or universal storm. 

ANSWERS TO A SERIES OF QUESTIONS 
DUTY 

To sacrifice a pleasure that the soul 
May find in higher happiness its goal ; 

With calm, unerring vision to forego 
The temporal part for the eternal whole. 

HAPPINESS 

With easy conscience and a kindly will, — 
Daring all good and fearing nothing ill, — 
The great, dead Masters guiding heart and 
brain, — 
The friend well-loved, — alive and with me still. 

84 



ENJOYMENT 

" What do I most enjoy?" — From hour to hour 
My longings change. A friend, a book, a flower, 

A symphony, a painting, — naught's amiss 
In such a world of beauty and of power. 

PLEASURE 

Mountain and sea, horizons vast and dim, 
A flowery sward along a rivulet's rim, 

And, 'mid a melody of lyre and bird. 
The kiss of Psyche and the goblet's brim ! 

MOTTO 

" To love and hate," — for there is much to hate 
And much to love in this our mortal state ; 

And when we scale the heights of the Beyond, 
Ah, who can tell us if the gain be great? 

LIBERTY 

Not out of all allegiance would I be. 
To brutish license and satiety 

The eternal laws deal certain punishment: 
Who truly serves alone is truly free. 

OPTIMISM 

From Chaos unto Man, without a rest. 
The building of the Universe progressed ; 

And what evolved the hero and the saint 
Will ever crown the better with the best, 



8S 



GALILEE 

O Galilee, O Galilee, 

No longer sound across thy sea 

Those accents strange and sweet ! 
The hollows of thy silent shore 
Will echo not forevermore 

The tread of blessed feet. 



And thou, Jerusalem, — of old 

The symbol of the streets of gold, — 

How fallen thy estate ! 
While hope was high and faith was fast. 
The kingdom of thy Lord hath passed 

And left thee desolate. 



O World he entered to redeem, 
Is that salvation but a dream, — 

A legend to outgrow ? 
We shiver on the verge of night. 
Yet fearful lest the morrow's light 

Will work a deeper woe. 



For this we tremble to resign 
Hath been for us a guide divine 

Through all our earthly way, — 
A joy, a peace, a heavenly spark, 
A hope mysterious as the dark 

And glorious as the day. 
86 



Yet the remorseless ages pass 

And faith that flourished Hke the grass 

Is slowly dying out. 
We feel that every master-mind 
Is leaving Dogma far behind 

For fellowship with Doubt. 



We know that Science hourly brings 
Some message from the heart of things 

That changes what we love. 
The vision vanishes afar; 
The comet that we deemed a star 

Shines nevermore above. 



About the altars of our youth 

We raise the walls of ancient Truth 

And bid the tempests blow. 
One whisper from the morning breeze, 
One shaft of sunlight through the trees, 

Hath laid the fabric low. 



But if the heavenly light doth shine 
In India as in Palestine, — 

From crescent as from cross, 
So all our human brotherhood 
May share with us one common good,- 

Can that be counted loss ? 
87 



The prophet in his fiery trance, 
The dervish in his frenzied dance, 

Are both on sacred sod. 
In Mecca and Benares stand 
True pilgrims to the Holy Land 

And make their peace with God. 



All worship is a sacrament, 
And every revelation sent 

Is free of time and place. 
Wherever faithful lives are led, 
Wherever hungry souls are fed, 

Descends celestial grace. 



And what if we must miss as well 
The magic of the miracle, — 

The sword at Eden's doors, 
The dead uprisen from the grave. 
The leper that no skill could save, — 

A word, a look, restores? 



We scorn too much the mystery 
That waits beneath the common sky 

And meets the finger-tips. 
We seek the strange where'er we go 
The sun unseen at noon doth grow 

Colossal in eclipse. 
88 



When the soft snow-flakes hide the plain, 
Is not the Autumn-canker slain, 

The leprous earth made whole ? 
And in the Springtime, at a breath 
Doth Life not issue forth from Death, — 

The sod receive a soul ? 



Why seek we in unwonted ways 
The force that guideth all the days 

And nights that e'er we saw? 
Do not the enchanted moments tell 
That all of life is miracle 

And miracle is law? 



Not in some stormy, strange event 
Is the Divine made evident : 

Through things we always see 
The incarnate spirit ebbs and flows, 
Mounting from atom up to rose, 

From rose to galaxy. 



O wonderful Apocalypse ! 
No longer shrouded in eclipse 

We hail the light again. 
The old-time fables must depart 
That, while they twine about the heart, 

Do but obscure the brain. 
89 



Yet — even as we speak — a doubt 
Assails our spirits looking out 

Upon the Promised Land. 
If knowledge be our greatest good, 
How is it with the multitude 

Who may not understand ? — 



The weary ones who pray and toil, 
Sowing their seed upon the soil 

That they may reap thereby, 
No sure return of earthly bliss. 
But, in a better scheme than this, 

A mansion in the sky : 



The fallen ones who, with the hate 
Of all mankind, bemoan their fate. 

Yet dread the other shore, 
Until they lift their eyes and see 
The Love that died upon the tree, 

And rise and sin no more : 



The sainted ones who bear the light 
Into the lands of darkest night. 

Content if they may trace 
Above the flames that lick their bones. 
Or through the crushing shower of stones, 

The glory of a Face : 
90 



The sorrowing ones who leave the tomb 
Radiant with an immortal bloom, — 

A peace that shall endure : 
" Sweet be thy rest ! The further pain 
Is ours, dear heart. We meet again. 

The Master's word is sure:" — 



How will it be with such as these 
Who worship great realities, 

If we before them set 
Vague hopes and fears for Heaven and Hell, 
A Christ who might be named as well 

Buddha or Mahomet? 



Or if their God — the loving Power 
Who visits them with sun or shower 

According to their call — 
Become an Essence too sublime 
To act in Space or think in Time, 

Though immanent in all? 



Unloved, unguided, will not they 
Look backward to the earlier day 

In silence of regret ; 
Then, when old visions reappear, 
Exclaim, " O Christ, that thou wert here, 

Or that we dreamed it yet !" ? 
91 



Incited to no worthy act, 

Will they not sink to slaves of Fact 

That yields but to the brave ; 
So, girded with indifference, 
Live only on the lines of sense 

And grovel to the grave ? 



Thus in the dimness of the Past 

Man's best would hide, — the promise vast 

That glorified his birth; 
And the long looked-for Future be 
The tomb of joy and liberty, — 

The twilight of the earth. 



But, O ye eyes and heart and brain ! 
Have ye not read the doctrine plain, 

The symbols evident. 
Of Evolution working out 
A progress through decay and doubt 

To the supreme Event ? 



Ere storm and chaos sank to rest, 
Life woke within an atom's breast 

And, careless of its goal. 
To plant and mollusc first attains, 
Sparkles in sinews, nerves, and veins, 

To flash out full in Soul. 
92 



Onward from man to man it goes, 
And slowly ripens where it sows 

And gamers where it reaps ; 
And not a moment of the day 
But marks some tare it casts away, 

Some precious seed it keeps. 



And sun and frost and wind and rain 
Foster the strength that can sustain 

Their perilous yoke and thrive ; 
But smite with fury to the ground 
All that is stunted or unsound : 

The fittest aye survive. 



The Past becomes the burial-place 
Of everything too weak or base 

To enrich the Future's store ; 
And every generation tends 
To larger wisdom, higher ends. 

Than that which came before. 



So what one age esteems divine, — 
A truth that shall forever shine, — 

The next age may outgrow. 
But not till it can do without 
What once 'twas dangerous to doubt. 

Some wider truth to know : 
93 



Not till the strength that came of old 
From fane of rock and shrine of gold 

Return, and men can say, 
" Our doubts are swallowed in our deeds 
Our faith is deeper than the creeds : 

To practise is to pray." 



Behold the blossoms on the bough,- 
An undulating Eden now 

Of fragrances and hues. 
Erelong they quit their airy hold. 
Sink, shrivel darken in the mould 

Or vanish in the dews. 



Think you their life has reached a close ? 
Oh, no: it lingers still and flows 

Through branch and bole and root. 
What falls is but an empty shell : 
The best is left behind, to swell 

Into the perfect fruit. 



And know that to the Autumn hosts 
Of russet-winged, fluttering ghosts 

That tremble through the trees 
They fed with sunshine and with rain,- 
Still in the mounting sap remain 

Their vernal ecstasies. 
94 



And when the serpent sheds his skin 
Before the Summer heats begin, 

The flesh will not decay. 
The tissue of each separate scale 
Is woven into newer mail : 

The husk is cast away. 



And so in change of every kind 
The substance may remain behind, 

Although the semblance fall. 
Beneath the surface of the creeds, 
Varied to suit a million needs. 

One Spirit stirs them all. 



O ye who love it, do not fear 
The older faith will disappear 

Because the new doth rise ! — 
The vital spark that glowed, despite 
The dust of dogma, rust of rite, 

Now kindles all the skies. 



O Galilee, thy waters roll 
Along the channels of the soul 

And hallow where they flow ! — 
The incidents of Palestine 
Like heaven-inspired symbols shine 

Of deeper truths below. 
95 



The Life shall ne'er forgotten be 
That showed us the sublimity 

Of sacrifice and pain. 
Though Christmas-Morn and Easter-Day 
And Pentecost should pass away, 

The Christ shall aye remain ! 



PHILLIPS BROOKS 

JANUARY 23, 1893 

Fallen that mighty form, 

Silent the voice 
That through the sin and storm 

Made men rejoice. 

Not alone Friendship stands 

Mute and forlorn : — 
Over all English lands 

Myriads mourn. 

Soldier, as one he fought 

Loving the strife ; 
Teacher, a truth he taught 

Radiant with life. 

The narrow bounds he burst 

Of creed and clan. 
Seeing in sinner first 

Brother and Man ; 
96 



Kept through maturer might 

Fervor of youth ; 
Saw through the smoke of rite 

The Sun of Truth ; 

Let faded dogmas drop, 

Sure of the Soul, — 
Fearless that Doubt would stop 

Man from his goal ; 

Drew from the dust and weeds 

Lessons of Love 
Sown in our earthly needs, 

Garnered above ; 

Saw in the stars and sea 

Symbols sublime, 
Gleams of Eternity, 

Hopes beyond Time; 

Heard heavenly whisperings 

Where'er he trod ; 
Felt through the frame of things 

The pulse of God. 

O dying century, test 

Thy sons and say, 
" My bravest, truest, best, 

I lose this dav !" 



97 



ADVENT 

The orb of Godhead gleamed 

Beyond our sight ; 
The soul a jewel seemed 

Encased in night. 

And while men slept, to them 

One came from far 
And set in heaven the gem, 

On earth the star. 



NOEL 

O Herald Angels, whether ye sung 
In Judean skies when the world was young, 
It matters not. — Till the world is gray. 
Ye will sing in our hearts and lives to-day. 



PALM SUNDAY 

I HOLD this day in truth adored 
By Parsee, Buddhist, Islamite, — 
By all who love and seek the light 

And serve with humble hearts the Lord. 

98 



Do not these holy symbols tell 
A wonder vaster, more divine, 
Than perished palms of Palestine, — 

Hosannas hushed in Israel ? 

On every warrior true and brave, 
Before the hour of bitter woe, 
God doth a heavenly hope bestow 

To cheer and fortify and save. 

'Tis the clear vision of the soul, 
Unstained as yet by smoke of strife, 
That grasps the deeper things of life 

And grows through wisdom strong and whole. 

That mystic moment more doth bless 
Than all the rapture that attends 
The instant when the struggle ends 

In what the world defines success. 

Palms for the victor who hath bled 
For Love and counts the prize a toy, 
And palms for him who fights with joy 

But, ere the triumph dawn, is dead"! 

LcFC. 



99 



GOOD FRIDAY 

O Love Divine ! How can we frame 
The thought of Thy immensity ? — 
We fold Thee in a form we see 

And call Thee by a mortal name. 

We cannot grasp the eternal ends 

That Thou dost serve, so make Thee show 
The finest fruit of Love we know 

And give Thy life to save Thy friends. 

O deem not far-off Calvary 

The phantom of a faded creed ! 
Undying is the human need 

That bade this deathless story be. 

And long as moons shall wax and wane 
Or constellations rise and fall. 
Will Christ be born within the stall 

yVnd perish on the cross of pain. 



HESPERIA 

O Western Land, I know thee but in dreams ! 
My thoughts have gone the journey of the sun : 
Mine eyes have but beheld his early beams 
Enkindling the Atlantic. I have won 

100 



Dear memories amid the antique lands, — 
Not sacrificed at Nature's secret shrine 
Where Man is nought and all things are Divine. 
Only in sleep my spirit understands 
Niagara's diapason echoing 
Far trumpet-tones from some aerial choir; 
Or seeks thy spray, Yosemite, where swing 
Fair rainbow-garlands ; or, for rapture, weeps 
By Yellowstone, — a maze of rock and fire 
That one vast wave of color oversweeps. 



OPTIMISM 

A BIRD on the upper bough. 

And a heart in pain below ; 
And the good God knows, I trow, 

That the passing human woe 
Is part of a smaller scheme 

Than the song that throbs in a glow 
Of rays on rays that stream 

From millions on millions of miles, — 
Till the happy warblings cease, 

When the starbeams bear through the infinite 
aisles 
The deeper joys of Peace. 



lOI 



A THOUGHT 

SUGGESTED BY THE DEATH OF FANNY KEMBLE 

The soul of Man, evolving more and more 
Life's deeper meaning, slights the outer round 
Of mere display. The thrill that tells the ground 
Spring is above and Winter's bondage o'er, 
The melodies that ripple on the shore, 
Awake emotions stormy and profound 
As in the savage breast the thunderous sound 
Of avalanches, or the earthquake's roar. 
Thus she in whom men's memories rejoice 
Forsook the mimic stage, nor could endure 
The noisy mockeries that so arouse 
The raptures of the mob. — In that one voice 
More sweetly sang the birds on Arden's boughs, 
More fiercely raged the madness of the Moor. 



AN OUTLOOK 

What is a day of sorrow, 
A week of vain regret? — 

On many a gloomy morrow 
A glowing sun will set. 

What darkest year can blind us 

To centuries of light? 
Though Time look black behind us. 

Eternity is bright. 

102 



VOICES 

One Speech there is, but voices manifold. 

A message meets our ears, 

Now wafted from the spheres, 
Now whispered from the worm within the mould. 

In Nature's chorus Self is unexpressed : 

The wood, the wave, the air 

No shallow pride declare, 
But deeper laws on which their beings rest. 

The forest in its stir of bird and spray 

Singeth the season's change, — 

The movement slow and strange 
Of earthly axis on its heavenly way. 

The ether chanteth in a thunder-strain 

Of suns that smite the sea, 

And set the vapors free 
To seethe in fiery foam from peak to plain. 

The ocean in its monody of might 

Or murmur of repose 

Telleth the tide that shows 
The world-heart yearning to the orb of night. 

O soul of Man, immortal heart and voice. 

Wilt thou alone be dumb. 

Nor to that chorus come 
With tones that make the universe rejoice? 

103 



The fruits of Fame, the treasures of the mine, 

The passions and dehghts 

Of stormy days and nights, 
All Life itself, lack greatness such as thine. 

Let these not be thy theme, but let it be 

The deep eternal things, — 

The hope that ever springs 
Out of the sod to end in Deity. 



SILENCE 

A SILENT change creeps over bud and bloom, 
From Spring to Autumn, and around to Spring ; 
Or soars into a higher sphere to bring 

The babe to manhood, manhood to the tomb. 

Silence of snows in yon aerial place 

The first fresh beam enkindles, base to height ; 
And, far beyond, the calm of endless night 

Encircling all the starry homes of Space. 

Silent, the aspiration of the worm 

To scale the heights of Man and be at rest ; 
And silence deep within the ocean's breast 

Beneath the seething riot of the storm. 

104 



Wails from the wounded, moanings from the mire, 
A din of demagogues, a strife of streets, — 
But silence where the heart of hero meets 

With willing hand to work the deed of fire. 

Beneath the turmoil of the senses roll 

The silent tides of life through heart and brain ; 

And under all the monotone of pain 
Deep silence seals the centres of the soul. 

Silence of death that deepens to despair 

When love has vanished, burst the mortal bands ; 
But down the dark to which we stretch our hands 

Come silent answers to the silent prayer. 

The great things are the silent ones. They cease — 
These undertones of earth — when once we rise 
To find beyond the portals of the skies 

The eternal silence of the God of Peace. 



LINES 

ON GIVING A DIME TO AN ITALIAN STREET-SINGER 

Poor child of the impassioned South, 
Whose ardent eyes and wistful mouth 
With warmth and melody enfold 
This clime of commonplace and cold, 

105 



Is it that in thy voice I hear 

The notes of many a vanished year, * 

Or that thy glowing tones portray 

The sunshine of this latter day 

Where hills rejoice and vineyards smile 

From Como's lake to Capri's isle? — 

Howe'er it be, the noisy street, 

The whirl of wheels and tramp of feet, 

Seem for a while to fade and flee 

Before one vision — Italy. 

labyrinth of blissful bowers, — 

Art's fruitage twined with Nature's flowers, 
Love's blossoms blent with those of Fame, — 
What memories cluster round thy name ! 

1 fain to-day would clearly see 
What I have longtime owed to thee. 
That in some mode I can repay 

To this poor wanderer by the way. 

Rome, — 'tis the centre whence to trace 
The history of the human race : 
Mistress of War, she won from Greece 
The empire of the Arts of Peace 
And bore the seed o'er land and main 
Of Homer's heart and Plato's brain; — 
So passing on from strength to strength 
Grew great through all the breadth and length 
Of Man's known world. The deeds she wrought 
Are woven into human thought 

1 06 



For time and for eternity. 
Still may this Iron Era see 
On Horace's and Virgil's page 
Glimmerings of the Golden Age ; 
Still echo from the long ago 
The clarion notes of Cicero ; 
Still Caesar fights and wins the fight. 
And, long as Mercy tempers Right, 
Till Justice from her throne is hurled, 
Justinian's Law shall rule the world. 
So, moving on through Peter's reign, 
Rome rose and fell and rose again. 
Now racked with rapine, murder, lust, — 
Now scorning — phoenix-like — the dust 
Of old defeats for higher flights. 
Last came the Masters — living lights 
Of heavenly inspiration sent 
To beacon from her banishment 
Beauty, — that she again might pour 
On field and fane her lavish store, 
And o'er the kneeling masses throw 
The immortal dome of Angelo. 

See where enchanted Venice smiles, 
Couched on her Adriatic isles ! 
Once Queen of all the seas that sweep 
From Tyre to the mightier deep. 
Her pride inflated by the breeze 
That bore her gilded argosies 
Into the crimson Orient. 
And, though on present gain intent, 

107 



Her commerce wrought a lasting good 
Better for that is understood 
Man's universal brotherhood, — 
The faith that bade us feed to-day 
The starving Russian far away. 
Nor hath she Hke a phantom fled, 
Her hope decayed, her beauty dead : 
Upon the bosom of the brine 
Still like resplendent jewels shine 
Her pinnacles and palace walls, 
And in her churches and her halls 
The glorious colors sparkle yet 
Of Titian and of Tintoret. 



And Florence, — 'tis a name we speak 
With deeper glow upon the cheek, 
With grateful reverence in the heart. 
First into view those features start, 
Pathetic and profound, that seem 
To figure one who dreams a dream, — 
Thy shame and glory for all time, 
Thy exiled son, the bard sublime 
Who best of living men could see 
How Time becomes Eternity ; — 
Then told his vision in a song 
More sweetly strange, more simply strong 
Than all that hath been said or sung 
Before or since by mortal tongue. 
Men and events so quickly pass. 
We scarce discern them from the mass : — 

io8 



The long, long years of civic fights, 
Of bloody days and poisoned nights ; 
Savonarola's earnest strife 
For finer fruits of faith and life ; 
The peace of Fra Angelico, 
And Raphael whose wonders glow 
Supreme among the things of Art ; 
And all the toilers in the mart, 
Sculptors and artisans untold 
Who wrought in marble and in gold 
Such loveliness as grows not old, 
But mellows with the ripening years. 
No idle show their work appears : 
For high in Brunelleschi's dome 
A voiceless Truth hath found a home, 
And Giotto's soaring miracle 
Reveals what Nature ne'er could tell. 



But vain in one brief flight of verse 
To try thy glories to rehearse. 
In heaven's azure harmony 
Reflected in the bluer sea ; 
In bursting grape and blossoming grove ; 
In shadowy haunts that poets love 
Where sings the nightingale all day ; 
In Petrarch's sonnet, Tasso's lay; 
In Pisa's tower, and in her " field" 
That did so holy a harvest yield ; 
In Milan's marvel, vast and white, 
A Gothic paradise of light ; 

109 



And not less glorious convent shades 

Where Leonardo's Wonder fades ; 

Siena's Art, Verona's tombs 

And grand Arena ; in the glooms 

Where violets hide, and in the pines 

That crown the sunny Apennines ; 

In every throb of earth that woke 

Vesuvian slumbers into smoke, 

Or, bursting outward to be free. 

In some sublime catastrophe 

Sealed in imperishable mould 

Pompeii and the life of old ; 

In Garibaldi's patriot band 

That forged anew a fatherland 

And — like Rienzi — summoned home 

The spirit of the older Rome ; 

In tonal mysteries that haunt 

Grave Palestrina's lofty chaunt, 

Rossini's, Verdi's, lyric sweep, 

And sweet wild-flowers of song that creep 

Out of the soil of common things, — 

Such strains as this poor minstrel sings 

That caught my mood and made me hear 

The dreamy plash of gondolier; — 

In each and all of these I name 

Is seen some sparkle of the flame. 

The essence disembodied, free, 

That floats through time and over sea, — 

Thy deathless spirit, Italy ! 

And this doth hold me now and fills 
My sense as in the Umbrian Hills, — 

no 



A breath that passed into my frame 

Ere I had learned to lisp its name, — 

A memory whose vision runs 

Beyond the rising of my suns, 

Revealing in the ages flown 

A treasure I may make my own, — 

A joy in all things beautiful 

That lapse of years can never dull, — 

An inspiration that hath led 

Through pathways opened by the dead, — 

Heroic men who met the needs 

Of darkest hours with shining deeds : — 

'Tis this that thou hast been to me, 

poet-soul of Italy ! 

Could hand of mortal ever give 

Due meed to Him in whom we live 

And move and have our being? — So 

What to His creatures we may owe 

May pass our efforts to repay. 

Oh, witless of my feeble lay. 

Thou minstrel from beyond the sea, 

Wert thou incarnate Italy 

While I besought thee, '* Take thy fill : 

House, hoard, and heart are thine," I still 

Would be thy debtor ! As it is, 

1 reckon for this moment's bliss 
That thou wilt thank me for a dime. 
Here, take it ! I have told in rhyme 
What Italy has done for me, — 

So this I give to Italy. 

Ill 



THE CENTURY-PLANT 

Not one, but many servants, hath the Lord 
Appointed in due order to record 
Where we have sinned in thought and deed and 
word. 



Each angel serveth for a thousand years 
Ere he transmit the scroll whereon appears 
The seal of all our human hopes and fears. 



And there is ever frien41y rivalry 
Among the blessed ones who fain \^ 
Next chosen for that lofty ministry. 



Before the last long cycle reached a close 
There were two mighty claimants who arose 
With holy zeal, as fitted loving foes. 

Then God spake : " Seek ye both earth's mysteries ! 

Who doth report the better to the skies 

What he hath seen below, hath won the prize!" 

One came back in a flash : " Naught could I see 
More worthy than this flower I bear to Thee, 
That blooms thus once in a whole century." 

After a hundred years the other came : 

" Till the last moment all things were the same ; 

Then one man spake and set the world aflame!" 

112 



The Almighty answered : " Nothing is too small, 
Though but a bough break or a sparrow fall, 
For Him to note who careth for them all ! 

** The garden of the earth grows many a weed : 
A thousand dull endeavors are the seed 
From which shall ripen one immortal deed : — 

" A thousand lapses go before the crime. 

Thou, in a futile quest of the Sublime, 

Hast lost — save one brief instant — all thy time. 

*' While this one — whose the high reward must be — 
Hath compassed in a moment's ecstasy 
The fruit and fragrance of a century !" 

So now the angel of the century-plant 

Holds the great record book. And may God grant 

That at His hand our souls shall never want ! 



ORPHEUS 

Silent he stood 
In the terrible Vast. 
Far over his head 
The hulks of Chaos 
Loomed through the Void and the Night. 
8 113 



Darkness was all; 

Discord was all; 

A spirit of Dread 
Stirred to the uttermost bounds. 
Then he lifted his voice 
And touched the lute. 



And out on the verge of things 

The great lights shivered and shone. 

The spheres uprose through the gloom 
And swayed through the circles of heaven, 

And high in the infinite Space 

Galaxies gleamed and grew still : — 

Into melodious motion 

Or into perpetual peace 
Passing, — were swayed in rhythm majestic 
Or gleamed and grew still. 

But an awful blackness was woven 
About the limbs of the earth, — 
A blackness of mist and of storm, 
A blackness of ashes and smoke, 
From the seething surface of Ocean, 
From the undermost depths of the central fire. 

Till out of the sky 
Flashed the fell shafts of the Furies 
And rent the blackness asunder 
With clash and clamor of hideous sound. 

Then he lifted his voice 

And touched the lute. 

114 



And the air grew sweet with sunshine 

And soft with deHcate drippings of rain and dew, 

And unto the gates of Cloudland 
Rose the many-hued, magical arch of the gods. 

Through the clear ether glistened 

The golden dawn of the moon, 
The dreamlike drifting of silvery stars, 

And in the height 
The day and the night knew Peace. 

But at his feet 
Barren and black lay the rock-ribbed soil ; 
Behind him the wood was a wilderness sere, — 
Sapless the bole and the root and leafless the bough ; 
Beyond, all bristling with chasm and crag, 
Towered the tortuous mountain ridges ; 

Before him the serpent sea 
Curved and crawled o'er the bones of its slain, 
Hissing its hate out in poisonous spray. 

Then he lifted his voice 

And touched the lute. 



And, like the flash of a sword. 
Flushed through the land a fragrance of flower and 
fruit. 
And forth from the whisperings of leaf to leaf 
And murmur and plash of the brook over pebble and 
moss 
Leaped the song of the bird. 
The hills were gemmed with glints of green 

115 



And the valleys were golden with corn and the 
vine, 

And ever in crystal eddies 
Through echoing coves and over sibilant sands 

Sparkled the limitless sea. 

But, around, the old wars were waged, — 
Strifes that were born of hate or of lust; 
Heart was turned against heart and hand against 
hand. 
The groan of the slave at the galleys, 
The wail of the wounded beast in his lair, 
The shrill repining of Poverty's brood. 
The smothered curse from the purlieus of Crime, 
The moan of the mourner clasping his dead, — 
These were the sounds that circled the world 
And swept aloft to the stars. 
Then he lifted his voice 
And touched the lute. 

Love's harmony divine 
Out of the discord swelled till all had become 

A symphony splendid, sublime, 
With heart to heart antiphonal, hand to hand. 
Voice of brother to brother called 
Across the deep and Commerce was born. 
Science drew forth into light the secrets of earth. 
And Art enkindled its gloom with the glories of 
heaven. 
Charity chased the tear from the cheek of Care, 
And Worship upbore the burdened soul to the sky. 

ii6 



Life was conceived in joy and in beauty fulfilled 
And — yet more beautiful — Death 
Opened the door to the wider Hope. 



He touched the lute, 
And lifted his voice: 

" Under the surface of things, 

Beauty and Order and Love 

Abide forever and ever. 

Blind ye were and ye saw not ; 

Deaf, and ye heard not. 
I that have opened your eyes and your ears 
Wrought not these wonders of sight and of sound ; 
But show and sing what hath ever been, 

And shall be forever and ever. 

In the primal days 

All seemed confusion and chaos 

Till the Poet came and his song 

Taught you how Order ruled 
The far-off, inconceivable systems and spaces. 
But ye wandered in darkness and mystery still : 

Though the path of the stars shone clear. 
The ways of the world were compassed with sorrow 
and shade. 

But the Nature ye dreaded, whose face 

Was frowning with terrors of storm and abyss, — 

Have I not shown you her heart, 

The heart of your loving Mother ? 

And the Life of Man that ye deemed 

A tangled thread in a maze of universes, 

117 



Leading from naught behind into naught before,- 

Have I not set it forth in my song, — 

The wonderful Unk that binds 
The sod of the earth to the soul of God? 

This is the marvel of Music, 

This the power of the Poet, — 

That through the turmoil of Time, 
The weakness and woe of the children of men 
'Mid the whirl and might of the million worlds, 
These twain announce in accents orphic, serene. 

That, under the surface of things, 

Beauty and Order and Love 

Abide forever and ever!" 



APPLE-BLOSSOMS 

'Tis not a time to toil or think ; 

For languid is the warmth that crawls 
From yonder blue horizon's brink 

Over the winding orchard-walls 
To nestle in the white and pink 
Of apple-blossoms. 

Nor yet a time to moan and sigh ; 

For cheerful is the light that leaps 
Out of the clearness of the sky 

To mingle with the mist that steeps 
The fragrant foliage, — low and high 
All apple-blossoms. 
ii8 



Rather, a time to sleep and sing: 
To sleep — amid a dreamy maze 

Of petals downward fluttering; 
To sing — when our awaking gaze 

Doth greet new pledges of the Spring — 
New apple-blossoms. 

Season of promises that shoot 
Inspiring gleams across our way, 

Moulding and mellowing seed and root 
For harvest in that golden day 

When here will flush the ripened fruit 
Of apple-blossoms, — 

How all thy varied notes aflirm 
That Youth and Passion never die. 

But merge their crudeness in a term 
Of rich and calm maturity, — 

As Autumn's glory hath its germ 
In apple-blossoms ! 



USEFULNESS 

Ask why the lovely violet hides her head 
Dew-tilted in some fragrant haunt of fern, 
Nor sweetens with her breath the noisome bed 
Of pestilence. — Ask why the cirri spread 
Their silvery folds about the spheres, nor yearn 

119 



To soothe with shadow or refresh with rain 
The parched, unfruitful places of the plain. — 
And then ask me, a poet, why I turn, 
In scorn of earth, to more ethereal sights 
For my fit theme. Oh, there are appetites 
Of heart and brain not to be satisfied 
With meat and raiment, purposes sublime, 
A use above utility, a tide 

Of Soul that bursts the bounds shaped by the tools 
of Time ! 



CANON 

Her voice is as the sound of evening bells — 

Of evening bells across an inland sea — 
Across an inland sea that sinks and swells — 

That sinks and swells, from tide and tempest 
free — 
From tide and tempest free, yet o'er whose calm — 
Yet o'er whose calm each woodland zephyr 
sweeps — 
Each woodland zephyr sweeps a dewy balm — 
A dewy balm unknown where Ocean sleeps — 
Where Ocean sleeps. 



120 



FIREFLIES 

Through the dim, dewy reaches of the grass 
And leaves that gUnimer out of fragrant heights 

Mysterious shapes and shadows pause and pass 
And mingle in yon maze of eddying lights, — 

Like fiery harbingers sent from afar 

Ere some vast system dawns upon us in a star. 

Are they the dust of the old ages dead 

By the night's magic quickened into flame, — 

The thoughts and deeds and passions that had sped 
Out of this turmoil, when a summons came 

To quit their tomb and throb before our eyes. 

As Dante's twinkling souls illumine Paradise? 

Or, — since the Fancy craves so free a rein, 
Torches are they that light the winged fays 

To dreamy childhood dear, but sought in vain 
'Mid the dull unbelief of after-days, 

Till the weird hour when Wonder is awake 

Doth o'er the sense once more the old enchantment 
shake. 

Perchance stray sunbeams from the underworld 

Are heralding the dawn that is to be, 
Or from a far volcano have been hurled 

Hints of the inner realm of mystery, 
Or darkling dewdrops, kindled by desire 
Of starry splendors, strive to mount the sky in fire. 

121 



Why should we fear to know them as they are, 
Nor blind the bram with wild imaginings? 

Let Truth suffice, lest to our minds we mar 
This miracle of living, sentient things 

That glow yet are consumed not, — a feat 

That Science cannot fathom, — lightning void of 
heat! 

Yet may we view them with a poet's sight, — 
Symbols of much they differ from in name : — 

Like a young maiden's fancies, pure and bright, 
Nor ever scorched by an unhallowed flame ; 

Like holy lives that in a world of sin 

Seek not a clearer guide than that which shines 
within ; — • 

Like Mother's love, content to be and burn. 
Fed by no fuel save its vital breath: 

Like heavenly hopes that gild the gloom and turn 
To sparkling meads the shadowland of Death ; 

Like the Divine, — that in the life it made 

Doth for a moment flash, then for a moment fade. 

Awhile they linger and awhile the air 

Is scintillant with lustrous ecstasy ; 
Then comes a change, and all that was so fair 

Melts in a mist enfolding field and tree. 
And as I watch their waning, nigh forlorn, 
Upon the breath that slew them radiant rides the 
Morn! 



122 



AT MIDNIGHT 

I OFTEN wonder, in the dead of night, 

Which of us two will first pass out of sight 

Into the Unknown Sea. If it be thou, 

I feel that sorrow will not bid me bow 

My head in long despair, — will rather grow 

Into a silent hope that will not fail 

Before the dawning, when I too shall know. 

If mine the earlier summons to set sail, 

It were not hard to wait on pleasant shores 

In some strange land where errant breezes ring 

With echoes of the older life, and bring 

At last the sound of thy approaching oars. 

Oh, futile foresight ! Let the Future rest 

In His control who orders all things best ! 



A SON OF GOD 

" The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they 
were fair." 

Archangel, lo, in stature; in his eye 
A gleam like Lucifer's ; o'er marble brow 
Great golden locks slide downward to allow 
Soft hands to twine in them caressingly. 
He sees no longer forest, stream or sky 
Save in reflection when he draws her face 
Closer to his — ^then sinks in her embrace, 
And all things are forgot. The smothered sigh, 

123 



The quivering limb and shadowed vision show 
The body's bliss, the anguish of the soul — 
Its heavenly lodger — feeling from the whole 
The virtue vanish and the glory go : 
For when a god doth crown his low desire 
The crown of godhood slips into the mire. 



A THANKSGIVING 
1901 
We thank Thee, Lord of the new century, 

For all the deathless marvels of the old, — 
The glorious age that set Man's spirit free 

And taught him Truth. Those hundred years 
enfold 
Art, Science, Letters, — thoughts and deeds and men 
Such as the world may rarely see again. 

We thank Thee for the precious life we mourn 
Of him who was our leader in the fight ; — 

Grave, temperate, just, who, in the face of scorn 
And loving peace, dared battle for the right. 

Not all unfruitful may that bullet be 

That brought the stricken Nation nearer Thee ! 

124 



We thank Thee for the blessings of the hour, — 
The prosperous toil, the wealth of farm and mart. 

Our greatest city rescued from the power 
Of tyranny and corruption. May we start 

Once more with fresher hope and firmer will 

To end the infamies that are with us still ! 

We thank Thee for the future, — that the seed 

Of nobler civic life thus sown to-day 
Must ripen into action that will speed 

The Coming Age on some sublimer way. 
For all we are, for more we hope to be, 
We thank Thee, Lord of the new century ! 



"STARS THAT SILENT BE." 

Stars that silent be 
In the exalted deep 

Or imaged in the sea, — 

Though your lightnings leap 

From infinity. 

Though each beam be hurled 
From a blazing world, — 

Stars that silent be, 

How ye shame our noise 
'Mid these earthly toys 

That will so soon be gone. 

While ye are silent on and on 

Through all eternity ! 
125 



DE MINIMIS 

If touch be delicate and fancy rare, 

The lowliest things may in thy verse be found, — 
The murmur of mosquitoes in the air, 

The caterpillar crawling on the ground. 

Dante scorned not such things, and why shouldst 
thou? 

Nay, God thy maker made all these as well. 
Take humor for thy safeguard, but allow 

That there are truths untaught by Heaven or Hell. 



ON A DYING INSECT 

Thou fluttering mite of gauzy green 
That by untoward flame to-night 

Art rudely summoned from a scene 
That for some days hath shed delight 

On thy small senses, — what has been 

Thy profit from this sunny world 
Ere into darkness and oblivion hurled? 

A few short flights on shimmering wings, 

A few warm ecstasies in air, 
A golden glow, a glimpse of things 
Not understood, and everywhere 
A great, glad life that soars and sings : — 
Was it not well? Who asketh more 
To carry to the all-forgetting shore? 

126 



THE QUESTION 

Thou that art gone before into the Vast, 
Shall we be old or young when next we see, — 
I, soiled and spent with sorrows of the past, — 
Thou, fresh with youth of Immortality ? 
Will my poor ignorance mark me as a child 
To thy sublimer learning of the skies ? 
Or shall we seem as when we closed our eyes. 
Thy dear locks' blackness by no gray defiled. 
Mine white, perhaps, from nigh a century 
Of waiting? — Oh, I know not what may be!- 
But this believe, — ^Man's register doth hold 
Mere time-accounts : on God's eternal page 
Two souls that love are ever of one age, — 
Young in wise joy, in joyful wisdom old. 



TO OMAR KHAYYAM 

Thou art the very wine thyself hast sung — 
A potent draught that keeps us ever young. 

An essence of a sunnier, saner clime, 
That fires the brain and animates the tongue. 

The tavern door's thy gate of Paradise, 
Where, entering, thou garnerest truth — not lies. 

" We live, and we are flesh that throbs and glows ; 
We die, and we are dust that falls or flies. 

127 



" We drink, and we are gods, and in an hour 
Grow infinite in knowledge and in power. 

The universe is girdled by the grape : 
Eternity is fathomed by the flower." 



A YOUNG MAN'S CREED 

I BELIEVE — 'tis thus my creed begins — 
That the sins of sense are the lesser sins ; 
That the wile of a woman, a brimming bowl. 
Won't do very much to hurt the soul. 
They make things pleasanter here below 
And will not follow us where we go. 

As to that going hence, I think 
That we are living upon the brink 
Of a mighty Ocean, all unknown, 
(A thought I can hardly call my own,) 
And, when we are summoned to embark, 
A light will shine from out the dark 
And One — though we see not face nor form- 
Will guide us in safety through the storm. 

And as for Duty, 'tis understood 
That the final goal of all is Good. 
Sheer folly it were too long to wait 
Ere we fit ourselves for a better state. 

128 



So that if now my heart is bent 
Too much on pleasure, 'tis my intent 
When I grow older — to repent. 
Though Youth rejoice in many a taint, 
'Tis very well to die a saint. 



THREE FRIENDS 

There's a tree that grows by a forest stream 
Under whose branches I love to dream 
And watch the flickering sunlight creep 
Through a stir of blossom and bough, and leap 
Into checkered hues of living green, 
With a burst of blue where heaven is seen. 
And the silence of shadows and leafy ways 
Will haunt my heart with a peace for days. 

And there's a bird that loves to spring 
From spray to spray on careless wing : 
Little he heeds how long I sit 
To see his flashing feathers flit, 
Now in the maze of a hidden nest, 
Now where the sunbeams smite his breast ; — 
Till the silence melt in a wondrous strain 
Whose echo will charm long hours of pain. 

The while I He in my pleasant nook, 
A poet speaks to my soul from a book, 
And the silence of woodland, the song of bird, 
Grow to Life and Love at his magical word. 
9 129 



And I somehow think, as the years roll by 
And the shadows pass from earth and sky, 
I shall find that poem and bird and tree 
Were the dawning hints of Eternity. 



WESTWARD 

Comrade of mine in lands beyond the sea, 
As we have parted, so we part once more, — 
Thou hastening to the West, but not as those 
Who turn for scorn of Man and all his Art 
To Nature. 

Thou hast had high messages : 
Raphael hath spoken with thee, — Angelo, 
The bards that filled the cup of England's fame, 
And they whose praises best the silent stones 
Of great cathedrals utter evermore. 
These have interpreted the world to thee : 
Thou wilt not be a stranger anywhere. 

For when thou meetest some supernal scene 
Of mountain, prairie, river, thou wilt find 
The voices of the wild proclaim a tongue 
Familiar to thy ear as that which sounds 
Where Alpine blasts are hoarse with Liberty, 
Or the Loire ripples by some antique town, 
Or zephyrs murmur round Fiesole. 

130 



So peace will come : discordant tones will melt 
Into the universal harmony. 
Should one — the product of our cruder clime, 
The money-seeker, dead to higher things, — 
Stand in a mute indifference at thy side, 
Unmoved by all the gorgeous pageantry 
That sweeps across the day into the night, 
Aye void of meaning to his clouded soul, — 
Oh, then, sweet spirits from the older world 
Will whisper to thee ! — Thou wilt understand. 

So speed upon thy way ! The ripest fruit 
Of this fair land of promise will not bloom 
On the Atlantic shore. We who lack hope 
Do miss the new while we forego the old : 
Thou takest from the old to enrich the new 
With ampler life. Be welcome to the West ! 



INCOMPLETENESS 

That Love is ever perfect, who can say ? 
This morning's reverie by wood and stream. 
Though full of Love's sweet quiet, lacked the gleam 
Of its intensity. From yesterday 
With all its passion peace had flown away. 
One moment, 'tis the senses seem supreme ; 
Another, and they vanish like a dream — j! 

Phantoms impure that shun the Spirit's ray. 

r3i 



And there are times of strange forgetfulness 
When deep beneath the surface Love doth flow 
Like the still waters of a buried sea. 
Oh, what if this were Heaven — not to guess 
The secrets of the centuries, but to know 
In every instant Love's entirety ! 



THE LAST LINE 

"'Then what is life?' I cried." — Shelley's "Triumph 
of Life." 

Thou, who of all the poets that I know — 
Living or dead — art dearest to my soul, 
Hast answered thy last question. Not the roll 
Of the breath-bubbling billows could overthrow 
The wonders of thy work. — For us who live 
Thy failures fade, thy triumphs ever grow. 
We were not set within this earthly show 
To solve Life's problem, — rather to receive 
With humbleness whate'er the gods bestow 
Of virtue or of beauty : so to achieve 

The one and chant the other that our deed 
And song, though time obscure them, yet may be 

Forces that conquer Life, — the hidden seed 
From which shall blossom Immortality. 



132 



NATURE'S ANALOGIES. 

If strife were all and pain were all, 
Why should these gentle mists arise 

And soothe the ravage of the Fall 
With sweeter air and softer skies, 

And lure all Nature to repose 

At last beneath the silent snows ? 

If death were all and time were all, 
Why should the buried seed and root 

Appear at Spring's high festival 

Fulfilled in leaf and flower and fruit, 

Till, laden with their sunny prize, 

They sink again, again to rise? 



SPRING'S MESSAGE 

O Love that withers, Hope that yields 
To biting blast or sultry storm. 

There is a lesson in these fields 

That struggled through the snow to form 
A pasture rich and warm ! 

No grief there is, nor hidden need, 
Nor bootless strife, nor wasted power. 

That may not, dying, drop the seed 

From which shall spring in sunnier hour 
Some perfect fruit or flower. 
133 



So let us help the weary hands 
And smile into the weeping eyes, 

And in the spirit's sterile lands 

Sow the good seed that soon shall rise, — 
A harvest for the skies. 



LOVE'S DUALISM 

Now do I wish thee, Love, to be as white 
As God's sweet angels in their high estate 
Of spotless purity, — a fitting mate 
For that dear Queen who reigns in endless light. 
Now I would have thee thrill upon my sight 
A very woman, warm and passionate, 
Outdoing my desire, not loath to sate 
With clasp and kiss the senses' appetite. 
Nor do I ask how both these things may be, 
Nor whether I shall presently repine 
That I did wrong thee even by a thought. 
Nay, thou hast twofold worship, — thus besought 
To crown my Manhood with felicity 
And glorify what in me is Divine. 



134 



SPRING IN THE SPACES 

Skyward a strain ascending 
Betokeneth the ending 

Of Winter's sullen calm. 
Stars, do you see the blossom 
That Earth bears on her bosom, 

Or hear her vernal psalm? 

As on a mighty river 
Ye seem to float forever 

Around, and still around. 
How can her breath enfold you, 
Or how her singing hold you. 

Through silence so profound? 

And yet ye seem to listen 
And, in your joy, to glisten 

With soft and tremulous light, — 
As though our Spring were tingling 
Through all your midst and mingling 

With Springtides out of sight. 

The spirit's flush and feeling 
The stars are now revealing, 

And now the robins sing: 
For thou, O Man, art measure 
Of Nature's pain and pleasure; — 

'Tis thou that art the Spring ! 



135 



CARNOT'S DEATH 

Not on some despot drunk with slaughtering, 
For whose delight the millions starve and sweat, 
Nor on some foolish fop o' the coronet 
Whose toys and tinsel rouse the underling 
To murderous envy, — not on such as these 
The blow hath this time fallen, but on one. 
Noble and true and stainless as the sun, 
Who stood for Labor and the Love that frees. 

Nations, avenge this death ! Hound into shame 
This horde of hellish creatures and their creeds, 
Hateful to God and hideous to Man ! — 
Or in the direst day since Time began 
Honor will be the ghost of dead men's deeds 
And Liberty the shadow of a name. 



COMMON LIFE 

Sweet Common Life ! — How many press 

Along thy walks, in soberness 

Of joys that calm and woes that bless, — 

And peaceful homes in pleasant meads 
Where time and change still sow the seeds 
Of gentle thoughts and kindly deeds, 

136 



And all the budding moments blend 

In fruitful years, and, at the end, 

Comes Death, the reaper — and the friend ! 



A SUMMER NIGHT IN TOWN 

It is a Summer evening. All the street 
Is thrilled with turmoil such as never fell 
On ear of rustic where the frog-throats swell, 
And cricket chirps to cricket through the heat. 
The throb of voices and the pulse of feet. 
And whir of wheels, aye coming, going, — tell 
Of men a million who as strangers dwell. 
And pass, and part, and nevermore may meet. 

This is the poor man's revel. Let the rich 
Muse in the mountains, dream beside the sea ! 
Here every alley hath its jollity: 
The laborer leaps, the wife forsakes her stitch 
To join the children's dances, — over which 
The stars of heaven watch eternally. 



137 



LOVE, THE PUklFIER 

I KNOW she loves me not. I know 
The hope that was my Hfe is dead ; 
And I resolve — once having said 

That what God wills is better so — 

That, as her soul is white as snow. 
So all these passions that had been 
Her tribute were she crowned my Queen, 

Her worship, had she deigned to show 

The Heaven here we dream above, — 
Shall never with unhallowed lure 

Lead soul and body into shame, 

Nor I, with hands and heart impure 

Hear, when those dear lips breathe my name, 

" He was unworthy of my love !" 



THE DAY AND THE HOUR 

Is it not time? — When all the promised land. 
Sown with the sweat of heroes, purified 
By fire and blood, doth at the last provide 
A crop of foul corruption, shall we stand 
And dream that easeful heart and indolent hand 
Have here a place, — or, blinded by our pride, 
Deem we alone are sheltered from the tide 
Of Heaven's vengeance sweeping up the strand? 

138 



Help, brothers, help ! Ere the high gods proclaim 

Democracy a failure, from his seat 

Drag the vile ringster down, blot out the name 

Of every venal voter, rid the street 

Of demagogues, — so only shall we be 

Freemen once more, and worthv to be free ! 



MAY 

The sunbeams circle leaf and root 
Where, with a smile, she standeth mute 

To watch the gleaming lines of orchard 
Swelling and blossoming into fruit. 

The fruit will come not till she dies ; 
Yet is no sorrow in the eyes 

That cannot fail to read the promise 
Thrilling and filling the earth and skies. 

The past she knows not, nor the days 
When o'er the sheen of snowy ways 

The winds of Winter raved, and whistled 
Out of a forest of frozen sprays. 

Nor yet she dreams of nights grown long 
When all the sweetness of her song, 

Made bitter by the breath of Autumn, 
Soundeth the dirge of the fair and strong. 

139 



Or else, beyond the dying pain 

She sees once more the buried grain 

Bestir itself till, steeped in sunshine, 
Life will arise from its tomb again. 



So is her present joy complete. 
Faint wild-flowers are at her feet ; 
Soft violets and mosses scatter 
Over her pathway an incense sweet. 



Above her, vapors veil the noon ; 
Wood-robins trill a liquid tune, — 

Translating thus the hope of April 
Into the glorious gain of June. 



ON THE NAMING OF A NEW COUNTY 

O NATIVE State, through whose clear ether rang 

The clarion call of Liberty, until 

The echoes borne o'er city, stream and hill 
Awoke the war from which a Nation sprang : — 
And in whose latter day the direful pang 

Of slavery and schism summoned still 

To glorious efforts of heroic will 
Thy sons who fell, or who in triumph sang : — 

140 



Let not dishonor doom thy free career 
To servitude more galling than the claim 

Of British prince, more shameful than the throe 

Of Southern thong! — Crown not corruption here, 

Nor on thy own fair heritage bestow 
The infamy of an ignoble name ! 



FRUITLESSNESS 

My natal month, how hast thou profited, — 

Thou, Nature's holy season, when we see 

In every bush a choir, in every tree 

A temple 'neath whose dome is incense shed 

From flowering shrines that hallow Winter's dead? 

Thy very atmosphere is poesy. 

And why hast thou been voiceless then in me, — 

Once at thy fertile bosom born and bred ? 

Hath not the star an image in the stream. 

The lark an echo in the vanishing vale, 

And absent Love a memory and a dream ? 

Nor should this present, earth-born beauty fail 

To find reflection in some rapturous lay. 

Sweet with thy breath, effulgent with thy day. 



141 



SUMMER'S LEGACY 

The pleasant Summer days are o'er, — 
The lights and shades that seemed to thrill 
The soul of river, woodland, hill, 

To utmost bounds of sea and shore. 

But thoughts that sweetened to the breeze 
And blisses born of sunny hours 
And hopes that blossomed with the flowers 

And love that fruited with the trees, — 

Shall pass not, though the rose be dead 
And winds be keen with Autumn cold 
And ripeness sink into the mould, — 

The fragrance spent, the glory fled. 

For every season's truest gain 

And richest promise are not found 
In fleeting favors of the ground, 

But treasured in the heart and brain. 

The firmer will, the clearer eye. 
The purer passion, — these are left 
When sight and hearing are bereft, 

Unblest by earth or sea or sky. 

And memory cheers us evermore, — 
A painter of the faded day. 
Smoothing the darker lines away, 

And gilding what was bright before. 

142 



So, though the coming Winter bring 
Its carnival of ice and snow, 
For us the Summer still will glow, 

The trees will wave, the birds will sing. 



IN DROUGHT TIME 

Each parched leaf, each withering flower, 
Though thirsting for the gracious shower. 
Strives to conceal its burning need 
And still be beautiful indeed. 



The grass is yearning to be green ; 
The piny pinnacles are seen 
Stretching their torrid tops on high 
To tempt some moisture from the sky. 

But though they fade, they still indue 
A loveliness of form and hue. 
And sparkle gayly in the sun 
That threatens death to every one : — 

Like souls that in some sterile land 
Find none to aid or understand. 
Yet dare, in solitary state. 
To be themselves and baffle Fate. 



143 



JOHN KEATS 

OCTOBER 29, 1795 

A HUNDRED years ! Ah, if these hundred years 

Had borne thee down to us a Hving sage, 

The glorious Greek of a material age, — 

Thou dear, dead youth, we should not shed these 

tears 
For what the world has lost! The songs unsung, 
The mighty epics surging like the sea, 
These, these we mourn, but mourn them less than 

thee, 
Forever silent, though forever young. 

Nay, for thy chaunt will never cease to chime 
Through all this mundane discord, dreamily 
Like strains of eld : in the whole realm of rhyme 
What subtler strength, what finer fantasy? 
Thou hast achieved: thy silence is for time, 
Thy youth and song for immortality ! 



ALL-HALLOWE'EN 

Around the watches of to-night 
Old Superstition weaves a spell. 

Endows us with prophetic sight, 

Marks each event a miracle. 

144 



The spirit of our childish play 

Is overspread with mystery. 
We think of things we dare not say ; 

We dream of what we dread to see. 

Strange echoes greet the song and shout ; 

Our gayety is half a gloom, 
And phantoms seem to flit about 

The dim recesses of the room. 



How hauntingly the ghostly brood 
Of ancient faiths and fears remain ! 

They were begotten in our blood 

To blossom forth in heart and brain. 



But bolder now, we bid them grace 
The Life they boasted once to own. 

And beautify its commonplace 
And harmonize its monotone : 

Thus learning, in a far-off way. 

How myriads by their lives sublime 

Brought Heaven into every day 
And the Eternal into Time, — 

The souls of every land and age. 

Of every race and tongue and creed. 
Whose glory is earth's heritage 

Of saintly thought and word and deed 
10 145 



And in their homage once again 

'Tis fit to-morrow's sun should shine, 

For men have crowned them kings of men 
Whom God anointed as divine. 



REDIVIVUS 

I THOUGHT I knew the catalogue of sins ; 

But every day some undescribed disgrace, 

Some new undreamed-of monster, shows its face, 

So that the heart grows faint and faith begins 

To tremble lest the victory remain 

Not with the Good. But when I longer gaze, 

I fear no more, seeing with glad amaze 

Beneath Man's lowest level runs a vein 

Of the Divine that needs but circumstance 

To lie exposed in some heroic hour, 

Some scene of sacrifice, before whose power 

The world will ask with wonder, " Did a trance 

Ward off decay from sainthood? — Among men 

Has Francis of Assisi come again?" 



146 



A SUMMER SERMON 

Under my feet 

The grass was sweet; 
The Summer sun made nature new. 

Above the tree 

Infinity 
Looked down from an unfathomed blue. 

Across the dells 

The village bells 
Were heralding the holy hour, 

While cooed the dove 

Her lays of love 
Soft-cradled in some leafy bower. 

O bells that ring, 

O birds that sing, 
O Summer rapture, free and full, 

The things ye show 

Can no man know 
Whose heart is cold, whose ear is dull ! 

Who fears not Fate 

Alone is great, 
Who all things loves alone is good ; 

Who understands 

Life's plain commands 
Hath God and Nature understood. 



147 



THE SONNET-FORM 

Even as the vapors of the tempest move 
Their leaden phalanxes across the sky, 
And with the molten mass the sunbeams vie 
Till, born of both, the rainbow flames above ; 
Or as the man, the woman, best to prove 
Their utter oneness, turn in sympathy 
To where a little slumbering form doth lie, — 
The sum and the solution of their love: — 

Such is the marriage of those dual rhymes 

That blend and part, even yet again to meet 

In sinuous sweetness like accordant chimes ; 

Till a fair offspring rises into view, 

Linked to their thought, although the form be new, 

And, lo, the Sonnet, soulful and complete ! 



BOOKS 

O SILENT volumes on my shelves. 
That hold the deathless and divine, 

Ye have but to reveal yourselves. 
And I am yours, as ye are mine ! 

Mere ink and paper though ye be, 
As shells wherein no life appears, — 

If hand but touch and eye but see. 
Then mind meets mind across the years. 
148 



Dante and Shakespeare speak once more ; 

Beethoven sings his soulful strain ; 
And in the unsealed tombs of yore 

Wake all the passion, all the pain. 

They are not dead, these silent ones, 
Nor dumb, but eloquent with light. 

And sparkle like the infinite suns 

Beyond our reach, though in our sight. 

Like melodies that once have thrilled. 
And in the memory never die, 

Those calm, majestic voices stilled 
Come echoing from eternity. 



FRANZ LISZT 

JULY 31, 1886 

Ten years ago to-night that great, sweet soul 
Passed through the barrier into the beyond. 
And I would lay this tribute at his grave. 

Never was finer fancy, subtler sense 
Or mood more magical wherewith to show 
The mighty masters to a waiting world 
Than guided o'er the keys those finger-tips 
That held the most complete of instruments 

149 



In thraldom, — he himself an instrument 

Whereon the spirit hands of ^schylus, 

Of Dante, Tasso, Petrarch, Goethe, — wrought 

Tone-wonders that have made them live again 

To listening ears and loving hearts. The land 

That gave him birth bestowed on him the power 

To clothe in harmonies of flawless Art 

Her strange, wild notes of Nature. Lastly, Rome, 

Whose faith he followed simply as a child, 

Inspired him by her holy mysteries 

And led his muse to blest Elizabeth — 

His country's saint — and to the cross of Christ ! 

'Twas thus he lived, nor in the duties failed 
Of man and friend, but with kind word and deed 
Aided the struggling and, with eye and ear 
Prophetic, gave the verdict to the world, 
And hailed the genius where the many scoffed, 
And knew the gold though men pronounced it dross. 

True to his conscience, trusting in his creed, 

A votary of Art's sublime ideal, 

He trembled not when came the fatal call, 

But struck with fearless hand Life's final chords, — 

The glorious preludes to Eternity. 



150 



OFF HAVANA 

FEBRUARY 1 5, 1 898 

There came at night a clarion call from Heaven 
To heroes' souls that unto mortal ears 
Sounded the blasts of Hell. The hopes and fears, 
The loves and hates that earth and time had given, 
Through pain and death passed to Eternity. 
The shattered vessel, shivering in the flood 
Of hostile waters, stained with martyrs' blood, 
Uprose and sank. — Silence was on the sea. 

Silence was there, but in the hearts of men 
Through all the echoing centuries shall roll 
That thunder-peal of foe or fate. Again, 
Whene'er our Country calls, — forgetting not, — 
Her sons shall press undaunted to the goal. 
Die in their duty and be unforgot. 



TO OUR CENSORS 

An impious War ? — When we but ask to save 
Sons from the sword, daughters from brutal lust, 
End butchery and starvation, if we must 
Be impious so, we may, at least, be brave. 
An unjust War? — Justice is all we crave, 
Not for these thousands only in the dust, 
But for our martyrs. Lord ! — Thou, Whom we trust, 
Sawest what was wrought by Hell beneath the 
wave ! 

151 



War that may be less beautiful than peace 

Is nobler than dishonor. Often we 

Have sought a selfish gain, — not here, not here. 

This strife is born of love : that hate may cease, 

We pledge our lives, our gold, and have no fear ; 

For Right must triumph everlastingly. 



IN THE CHURCHYARD 

Beyond the ways I pass 
Where many come and go, 
The lowly and the great : 
A moment at the gate, 
A step across the grass. 
And, O my Love, my Love, 
The living sky above, 
The dear, dead form below ! 

Beyond the years I seem. 
Fading from where I stand. 
In the old life to move, 
Ere joy had proved a dream 
To dazzle and depart, — 
And, O my Love, my Love, 
Thy hand within my hand. 
Thy heart upon my heart ! 
152 



MICHAEL H. CROSS 

No more for us the rich piano chime, 

The 'cello's deep appeal, 
The organ tones that thrill the veils of Time, 

Shall from his fingers steal. 
Perfect the instruments no Master warms 

To strains sublime and sweet: 
His life, art, manhood — like their slumbering 
forms — 

Lie silent and complete. 

The gods he served were true gods : from their 
height 

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, 
Wakened his soul to melody and light. 

So blame him not if then 
He heard not the new voices while the old 

Rang glorious through the skies. 
Nor, blinded b}^ Olympus, could behold 

The dawning deities. 



153 



NATURE'S ALCHEMY 

Leaden the wings of the night till touched to silver 
sheen 

By a glimmer of the moon, that pales in a glory 
serene, — 

Gold of the East and gold of the West, and a sun- 
path between ! 



AN OCTOBER EVENING AT LAKE 
OSCAWANA 

Over the lake the solemn pine-trees bend 

And flash phantasmal images below. 

To earth and air the silvery shadows lend 

A light more magical than moonbeams throw 

O'er pinnacles of ice in Polar seas. 

Out to the horizon, upward to the stars, 

Stretches a woodland dark in mysteries 

And silences no mortal whisper mars. 

Yet through the lifeless framework wakes a thrill :- 

The triple call of tremulous katydids. 

The two that wait and wander as they will. 

The drowsy dog beneath whose languid lids 

Lurketh a love half-human: these have drowned 

Death, silence, in a flood of life and sound 



154 



THE END OF THE YEAR 

The nights roll on, the days unceasing pass, 

Nations arise and fall, seas ebb and flow. 

Thoughts shoot from man to man, dreams come and 

go 
While Life awakes in atom and in mass. 
There is no respite: all that is and was 
Moves ever onward in a shifting show. 
We say a year departs, and fail to know 
That Nature hath no years, — that she doth class 
Alike their days of birth and of decay. 
Yet is there not some higher law that binds 
These calendars created by our minds. 
Some science born of sentiment, some ray 
Of truth eternal in this period, — 
Man's measure till he merge at last in God ? 



THE YEARLY QUESTION 

Thy Spring will arrive with its buds and bowers 

And myriads that float and fly, 
And the breath of brooks and the freshness of 
flowers 

Will sweeten the earth and the sky. 
But O, if our hearts should miss the cheer 

That the birds and the blossoms bring ! 
Or will dead hopes quicken to life. New Year, 

With thy miracle of Spring? 

155 



Thy Summer will come with the golden days 

And twilights that linger long, 
The murmur of bees in the leafy ways 

And the hot hours thrilled with song. 
Fertile and full will our lives appear 

In Nature's gladness and glow? 
Or sterile and withered and worn, New Year?- 

This is for thee to know. 

Thy Autumn will round and ripen the fruit 

And harvest the tasselled corn, 
And into the shadowed wold will shoot 

The rainbow splendors of Morn. 
How will it find us, shattered and sere, 

Like garlands that droop and decay, — 
Or radiant still with a trust. New Year, 

That will never pass away ? 

Thy Winter once more with frosts and snows 

Will silver valley and hill. 
Nature will sink into deep repose. 

The pulse of the earth be still. 
Will our hearts be then like the frozen mere, — 

Love, happiness, vanished afar ? 
Or will hope of a future Spring, New Year, 

Shine in our souls like a star? 



156 



THE LOCOMOTIVE 

A SMOKING, shivering metal monster stands 

Awaiting our commands, 
With pulse afire as though the heart would burst, 

And iron throat athirst. 
Beneath that cap of steel, that brazen lid, 

Somewhere our Fate lies hid, — 
Somewhere the journey's issue slumbereth, — 

Deliverance or death. 

Deny it beauty ? — Watch it in an hour. 

Full panoplied in power, 
Speed over streams and forests, hills and plains, — 

A hurricane in chains. 
Shatter the darkness with its shafts of light, — 

A meteor of night. 
Or seek in misty curves the Peak's repose, — 

A spirit of the snows. 

Our work, you claim ? — Well, ours then, if you deem 

We put the strength in steam 
And, that we might this potency confine, 

Hid metals in the mine ; 
Nay, not unless we formed the brain that planned 

And the constructing hand. 
We shaped the shell : the substance and the thought 

Divinity hath wrought. 



157 



SYMBOLS OF SCIENCE 
I 

THE TELEPHONE 

Not all the bellowing of the embattled sea 

Or cruel crashing of the thunderous air 

Can make their rage resound where skies are fair 

Or conquer space with din and anarchy. 

Not so the voice of Man, — that silently 

Slips on a thread through mountain, forest, plain, 

River and ocean, to emerge again 

As vow of lover, curse of enemy. 

Such is the influence of human souls : 
Subtle vibrations ever come and go, 
Unnoted, from the tropics to the poles, 
From Labrador to Ind. Love hath its wings 
And Hate its lightning. Streams of kindness flow 
To aid us in our desert wanderings. 

II 

the phonograph 

Shout to the peak, and from the rocky height 
The echoes of thy voice will make reply, 
Till Nature lose her power and let them die. 
But Man hath wrought a wonder through the might 
Of sleepless Science. Let the Muse not slight 
This marvellous toy wherein the softest sigh 
May breathe true love for many a century, 
And the sweet song of faith grow infinite ! 

158 



A type of Life : for not a word is said 

Within this world of sounds and silences 

That loses potency to harm or bless, 

Though he that spoke be numbered with the dead, — 

A heritage of weakness or of worth 

From him whose strength or folly sent it forth. 

Ill 

THE TROLLEY 

Not with such steeds as on the Olympic day 

To scorned defeat or sacred victory led. 

Nor by the powers of vapor piloted 

Whose shrieks fill night with discord and dismay, 

We journey here. This monster doth essay 

To clasp with claw of iron overhead 

The chained, invisible lightning and be sped 

By heavenly currents on its earthly way. 

Ye that are bowed in bitterness of woe 
Or stagnate here in sloth and surfeiting, 
Lift up your eyes and hands and hearts and know 
That over you are forces on the wing 
From the Unseen that, were ye to attain. 
Would mould Life's progress, make its purpose 
plain ! 

IV 

THE KINETOSCOPE 

See how the marble of the Phidian day, 
The canvas warmed by Raphael, — embalm 
A moment's action in eternal calm : 
This look, this gesture that the human clay 

159 



Hath long resigned, — will thus forever stay, 
But motionless. Then wonder at this glass. 
Wherein a thousand scenes that swiftly pass 
Make one scene that will live for us alway. 

The hours, days, years sweep on: each minute's 

birth 
Blends weal and woe, the bitter and the sweet. 
Deem not thy own nor yet thy fellow's worth 
Weighed in a single triumph or defeat, — 
One deed or one misdeed of sense or soul. 
Flash Life's full cycle forth : judge by the whole ! 

V 

THE RONTGEN RAY 

In darkness once were deeds of darkness done. 
But now are done in darkness deeds of light. 
'Now doth the unseen flash upon the sight 
And o'er the infinite Mystery is won 
Another finite triumph. Not the sun 
Hath here vouchsafed the vision, but the night. 
Behind the flesh that veiled us, burning bright. 
Behold a new apocalypse begun ! 

Oh, vain to think the thunder of a word. 

The effulgence of an action are what we 

May solely offer to be seen and heard ! — 

The thought we deemed no human thought could 

sound. 
Our hearts, our very selves in time must be 
Imaged in full on all the Life around. 

i6o 



VI 

LIQUID AIR 

Deep-blue that blendest with infinity, 
Flecked with soft cirri-folds or, darkling, thrilled 
By the fierce tempest-throe, now art thou filled 
With life and warmth, — a balm to flower and tree. 
To man and beast a breath, an ecstasy,—^ 
Ethereal vapor ! — now by giant force 
And cold transmuted to a fluid source 
Of new and ever-potent energy. 

Is it not thus with Man ? These thoughts that soar 
Amid the sculptured pinnacles of the brain, 
These warm aflfections surging through the blood. 
In the chill grasp of Death shall not be slain, 
But changed to new activities, — a flood 
Of forces that shall fail not evermore. 



VII 

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 

Over the wilds of ocean and of shore 
Through the broad wastes of air flashes a word, 
Without a guide, invisible, unheard. 
Borne on those magic currents circling o'er 
The steadfast world, it pauses not before 
A point is touched, alone in earth or sky 
Responsive with a subtle sympathy, — 
And, lo, 'tis sealed in mystery no more ! 
II i6i 



O human voice that speakest to deaf ears, 
O human heart that findest feehng dead, 
Somewhere beyond the league-long silences, 
Somewhere across the spaces of the years, 
A heart will thrill to thee, a voice will bless. 
Love will awake and Life be perfected ! 



DREYFUS 

THE SECOND CONDEMNATION 

O MARTYR-SOUL, the infamy they speak 
Is of themselves alone, and not of thee ! 
They are condemned at last. Thou goest free 
By the high court of Heaven. One lowly, meek, 
A Jew, despised of Roman and of Greek, 
Hath once before turned doom to victory ; 
And God and Right will thwart eternally 
The vengeance that these human devils seek. 

The thunderbolt hath fallen ! From lust to lust 
France languished on her way, till her decrees. 
Moulded by perjuries and forgeries, 
Devote undying Justice to the dust. 
Nor heed the awful writing on the wall 
That she who loseth Honor loseth all ! 



162 



PHILADELPHIA, 1901 

Rulers, venal, corrupt, — insatiate 

For public plunder and a chief's applause ; 

Law-makers striving to subvert the laws ; 

A placid people, willing to await 

Some change — or none — as the decree of Fate, 

Unheeding how the robber's hand is laid 

On rights for which the price of blood was paid : — 

Such is the City now, — such is the State ! 

How long, how long? — O citizens, arise, 

Banish ignoble sloth, follow your sires 

Who woke to wrath, burst shackles, and were free ! 

Drive from your councils whosoe'er aspires 

To dim the old-time Honor that you prize : — 

End in the land of Penn this infamy ! 



POET TO POLITICIAN 

I TELL thee, — thou that playest fast and loose 
With ballot-box and bounty, — having made 
Of Statesmanship a dark, ignoble trade 
With Ethics cheapened to the test of Use ; — 
I tell thee, not with voice of equal man, 
If Dante, clearest-sighted of all time, 
Hath told God's Justice rightly in his rhyme, 
If Goethe so knew beauty as to plan 

163 



A path of sweetness for the centuries, 

If Shelley glowed with true prophetic fire, — 

Then is thy boasted gain a crown of woe ; 

And where thou deemest 'mid the scum and mire 

The Ages drift — 'tis but an eddy's flow 

Back from the tide of the Eternal Seas. 



"IN THE VIOLET" 

In the violet 

Glistens yet 
The drop that fell at noon. 

So soon 

Can it forget — 
Lulled in fragrant ease 
Here beneath the trees — 
The wondrous life on high ? 
Outflashes full an image of the sky ! 

In the infant's eye 

Lurk and lie 
Shadowy gleams of gold 

That fold 

What mystery ! 
Rays from heaven are they, — 
Light for earth's dark way 
Dulled as the path is trod? 
Love leaps out in a look, and Love is God ! 
164 



SINAI 

O MOUNTAIN of the unknown God, 
Upon whose peak that cleaves the sky 
Beyond the reach of mortal eye 

No mortal foot hath ever trod ! — 

Doth a benignant Father's face 

Shine, like the sunlight, on thy snow, — 
Or, ruthless as the lightning's glow. 

Doth Fate flash awful through the place ?- 

Fate, that shall wreck the world at last 
And end in naught the souls of men 
And, bringing Chaos back again, 

Blot out the future with the past? 

Our faith is dim who never saw 
The mysteries heralded of old, — 
The seer's descent, the calf of gold. 

The broken tables of the law. 

And at this day we cannot see 

The clouded summit thrill with power. 
Nor hear the Voice : the passing hour 

Is silent as eternity. 

We know but this : — a glint afar 

Through darkness of a heavenly light ; 
Beyond that star another night; 

Beyond that night another star. 

165 



ANTON SEIDL 

MARCH 28, 1898 

Not from his throat there came 

A magic sequence of melodious sound, 

Like tongues of living flame 

That fire the sense and soul and all around 

Shed gleams from heaven : the sway he wielded long 
Was not the power of song. 

Not with the plaintive reed, 

Beloved of Pan and sylvan deities, 
Nor with the hopes that plead 

Through strings that quiver into harmonies, 
Hath he his triumphs won, — not his that sign 
Of mastery divine. 

Not from creative thought 

Into the faded festival of Time 
Hath he fresh wonders brought. 

No glorious ode nor symphony sublime 
Sprang from his brain : the mystery of Art 
He felt but in his heart. 

And from that heart there fell 

On others' hands and voices and the soul 
Of the great world a spell 

That the decrees of fate could not control, 
Nor the wild wants of life : the misery 
Ceased for a while to be. 
166 



The Masters came again. 

Back rolled the ages : care and folly fled 
Immortal Beauty's reign. 

O not in vain in him that now lies dead 
Was born that mighty spirit at whose breath 
Genius awakes from death ! 



TO A WOOD-ROBIN 

Thou that dost thrill with thy melodious note 

The dewy dells and sylvan silences, 
And in a mist of green and gold dost float, 

A presence all unseen, yet there to bless 
With benison of pure and restful song 
The shadowed shrines where reverent fancies 
throng, — 

The very spirit of the wood thou art. 
And in thy cadences we hear and see 

The myriad life in which thou bearest part, — 
The moss-lined brooks that murmur lazily 

By banks of violet and coverts cool, 

Or plash across the pebbles to a pool ; — 

The winged sprites that leap and flash and fly 
From darkling haunts in underbrush and fern ; 

The deep, entrancing glimpses of the sky; 
The summer leafage sparkling till it turn 

The red and yellow of the dying year: — 

All these we feel and love when thou art near. 

167 



Teach us, dear bird, of our own lives to make 
Songs sweet as thine, yet more subhme in scope ! 

Nor fleeting, earthly beauty would we take 
To be our theme, but the eternal hope 

That crowns the sorrow, consecrates the sod. 

Makes the world's darkness luminous with God. 



THE CITIZEN 

READ BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, DELTA 
CHAPTER OF PENNSYLVANIA, JUNE 1 3, I9OO 

Arms and the Man I sing: not sword, nor spear, 
Nor bayonet, nor the brunt of cannonade, — 

Such arms as made a Nation in that year 
Of Concord and of Germantown, and bade 
The slave be free when Gettysburg had stayed 

The strife of brothers. For to-day I sing 
Arms that are nobler, surer, less o'erlaid 

With gloss of fleeting glory, — those that bring 
A far-off victory, not transient triumphing. 

The faith — 'mid evil's devastating might — 

That holds to vaster influence, higher laws ; — 
The hope that through corruption's blackest night 
Sees the dawn-glimmer of the righteous 

cause ; — 
The love that, careless of the world's applause, 

168 



Seeks but to serve and raise our fellow-men ; — 
Girt with this panoply, too staunch to pause 
Or falter in the combat, see him, then, 
Man of the Nation's need, — the stainless citizen ! 

Man of our need ! — Ah, he it is who must 

With knightly deed redeem the people's 
shame, — 
The civic honor trampled in the dust. 
The civic glory grown an empty name! 
When libel dares to foul the fairest fame, 
And bribery and blackmail buy their goals ; 

When ringsters are the rulers of the game, 
And venal voters shamble to the polls. 
What trust is there in States or faith in human 
souls ? 

What of the mart's low standards of success, — 
The gold to which we grovel, heeding not 

If here be profit of unrighteousness, 

Not sought in bounteous Nature's treasure-plot 
Of field or mine or watercourse, nor got 

By honest energy of hand or brain? 
The wealth that signifies a moral blot, 

A theft from trustful ignorance, a gain 
That seals another's loss, — is not its warning plain? 

But let us not despair. The same old ills 
Have threatened every age since time befell, 

Now conquering, now mastered by the wills 
Of men who knew life's task and did it well. 

169 



In this old town what helpful memories 
dwell !— 
Girard's unstinted hand ; the lustrous lore 

Of Meredith and Binney ; songs that swell 
Meade's triumph-march; suffering that flees be- 
fore 

The touch of Gross or Agnew ; — vain to mention 
more. 



Have we not all the guides that Heaven can give, 

Inspiring us on earth or from the sky? — 
Young men who died to show us how to live ; 

Old men who lived to teach us how to die ; 

He who in by-gone years wrought royally ; 
He crowned to-day — a tribute tears allow — 

'* The manly man," in loving memory, — 
Fit garland for that beautiful young brow 
That, loved and crowned, is seen of men no longer 
now. 



We need the patriot, — love of country fraught 
With eagerness to serve by sword or pen. 

We need the scholar, — him who in his thought 
Is linked with the great thoughts of mighty men 
That fire the world and make it young again. 

We need the saint, — not mumbling in the chill 
Ascetic shade of some monastic den. 

But in the rush of life, possessing still 
High principle, clean hands, a firm and fearless will. 

170 



Wage, then, the civic warfare ! Let the old 

Not overpraise a past whose faiUngs seem 
As grave as ours, though different in mould : 
We must advance! — And let the young not 

dream 
The future will evolve some wondrous scheme 
Without our aid. Through toil and suffering 
Great goals are won. Through darkness comes 
the gleam 
Of perfect vision. Let the warrior bring 
Courage, devotion, hope ! — Arms and the Man I 
sing! 



THE RIVER 

Beside the river I have thought 
Of those old days when you and I 

Upon another river sought 
Hours of tranquillity. 

What was there to disturb? — The tide 
About our paddles swiftly sped, 

Or else we paused a while to glide 
Where tree-tops twined overhead : — 

Rocks, birches, pines, and, here and there. 
Glimpses of home-life, calm and free, 

A village spire that gleamed in air, 
A far-off flash of sea. 
171 



But best to me of all, — the voice 

Whose tones the years can never dull, 

The face in which I still rejoice, — 
So young and beautiful. 

What dreamed we of a shadow ? — Life 
Held much for me and more for you, — 

Dear warrior, fitted for the strife, 
Brave, honorable, true. 

And now, — the river eddying by, — 

Not the old river ! — I, alone. 
And, for your word, your hand, your eye,- 

A little cross of stone ! 

Yet God in mercy sendeth down 
A heavenly gain for earthly loss. 

Who gave to me for Friendship's crown 
To bow and kiss the cross ! 



172 



DAYS 

What is the message of days, what is the thought 

they bring, — 
Days that darken to Winter, days that sweeten to 

Spring ? 

Is there a lore to learn, is there a truth to be told? 
Hath the new dawn a ray that never flashed from 
the old? 

Day that deepens to night, night that broadens to 

day,— 
What is the meaning of all, what is the word they 

say? 

— Silence for aye and aye, and the heart-beats never 

cease 
Till toil and life and the day are the night and death 

and peace. 



173 



JAN 30 1903 



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